Tag: science fiction

prompt: Include a huge twist, swerve, or reversal in your story.

available at Reedsy

Andrin’s feelers twitched in excited anticipation. Now that he had captured an “Elusive” from the Juria spike of the galaxy, he had a chance to advance. Maybe he would be allowed to mature to a female and start his … her … own hive.

He could already imagine getting the medal of science for dissecting, describing, and providing an in-depth study of the physiology of an Elusive, and the limited technology of its ship. If he could figure out where their home world was, it would be an easy colonization for the Grand Hive. Maybe that’s where Andrin’s own clutch would be laid.

The automated systems had already dismantled the small ship. It used a crude warp technology — distorting space directly around the ship — that his own people had left behind more than two hundred generations ago. With the fold drive, his ship outpaced the Elusive’s by more than a thousand-fold.

What was almost unbelievable to Andrin was how similar the atmosphere in the ship of the Elusive was to that within his own. At first, he thought the Elusive might asphyxiate in the higher pressure, lower oxygen concentration of his ship, but it seemed to be doing fine. If only his computer could figure out its language.

When it stopped making noise, Andrin walked to its cage, bent his feelers in a mockery of politeness, and spread his forelimb graspers. “Please, esteemed guest, continue to regale me with your tales while my computer examines your noises for any hint of intelligence.” He followed it up with a clacking of his mandibles and threat gesture.

Rather than shrinking back from him, the Elusive moved to the front of the cage with a speed that stunned Andrin. It nearly grabbed one of his limbs that was too close to the cage. With that, it began making noise again.

Andrin’s computer began to catch a few words here and there. Most were inconsequential words, those bits of syntax that held sentences together.

“… and then … but … a … from … with ….”

It wasn’t enough to determine what it was talking about, but the fact that it was talking was obvious. Andrin kept an eyestalk on the Elusive, trying to ascertain its mood, even if its speech was still impenetrable.

He couldn’t tell whether the Elusive was frightened, angry, stressed, tired or bored. Part of him hoped it was anything other than the last. Andrin had felt flashes of recognition of a predator at times from the Elusive. It had been watching him closely, but now it seemed not to care what he was doing. That was unnerving.

Andrin did everything he could to speed up the translation process. He assigned half of the main computing cycles to assist the translator. It didn’t seem to be helping, though. The longer the Elusive talked, the slower the completion bubble on the translator rose.

He began to catalogue the parts and pieces from the captured Elusive ship. There was a strange mix of primitive, like the drive, hyper-primitive, like the heating coils that might have been used for warming the interior or cooking food or both, and the more up to date, like the FTL communications array that wouldn’t be out of place in his own ship.

Among the primitive hardware was a piece that — obvious to Andrin — was the ship’s computer. He had dismantled it and spread it across the workbench in no time at all. There was nothing that stood out to him, though, as the actual processor. Many of the pieces might have been some sort of processor, but there was nowhere to contain a quantum loop generator.

The Elusive had stopped talking. Andrin turned to face the cage, ready to make it start again. The sight of the translator shutting itself off stopped him.

It touched a device behind its ear. When it spoke again, the device behind its ear repeated everything in a mechanical version of Andrin’s language.

“Okay, I have what I want, now I can talk to you. Your translation computer is horrible, by the way,” it said. “Your name is Andrin, and mine is Melody. Thank you for the ship and all the new tech.”

“You could’ve translated at any time?”

“Of course. I just had to wait until I got the all-clear from my ship’s computer.”

“The one over there on the bench in pieces?”

“That’s all just interface hardware. The computer itself is contained in modules throughout the ship’s frame and currently interfaced with your systems.” She smiled. “I should say, my systems.”

The expression drove a wedge of icy fear through every joint of his carapace. Andrin shrank back and hit the emergency jump button. When nothing happened, he did it again and again.

The cage opened and Melody stepped out and stretched. “It’ll be interesting to see how your artificial gravity works. We captured one from some squid-like things, but it requires being submerged in brine to operate.”

“Your systems are crude, primitive even. There’s no way you’ve taken control of my ship.”

“Which is it?” she asked. “Are humans primitives, or are we the boogeyman Elusive that gets blamed for every ship lost in the Perseus arm — you call it Juria I think — of the galaxy?”

“Computer, detain foreign life form,” he called out.

When nothing happened, Melody said, “Go ahead, computer, do what he said.”

A series of moving force fields and shocks drove Andrin into the cage which closed behind him. Melody sighed. “Again, thanks for the ship and the new tech. Computer, take us home.”

The fold drive activated and within the span of a few breaths the ship re-entered normal space in orbit above the Earth. “Welcome to Earth, Andrin. I’m afraid you’re going to be here for a while until we decide whether letting you go is dangerous.”

“What are you going to do with my ship?”

“My new ship?” Melody asked. “I’m going to take it apart so the science guys can study it all. Then, if I manage to get it back together, I get to keep it.”

prompt: Write a story in which something doesn’t go according to plan.

available at Reedsy

It is better to make no plan than to rely on the faithless and fickle. — Ch’tinga Book of the Holy, Chapter 370, Verse 92 — commonly quoted by Ch’tinga people

The poor, deluded monks and scribes that wrote The Book had no concept of reality. Need to include the faithless or fickle in your plan? Make ’em faithful and reliable; grab hold of their tender bits and squeeze until they get the message. As long as you have ’em in your grasp, they’ll follow you anywhere. — Master General Ikthan K’ch’tua, Andim War — commonly quoted by armchair generals and ‘edgy’ Ch’tinga in response to the previous

The pair of figures in exo-suits stood in the vast, empty hangar. The taller of the two, Ikthan Ach’tar, turned to the shorter. “I hate this high gravity, but it is a good idea. The cargo will be easier to manage. It’s the only part of this plan I like. 370-92 and all.” She turned back to watch for the arrival of the cargo ship.

Nantan Tak’cha waved his tail in dismissal. “Ach’tar, you worry too much. And this is more General Ikthan than The Book.”

“Remind me, Nantan Tak’cha, how you have them by the gonads? I mean, you hired pirates to bring our cargo. How can I not be worried?”

“No need to be formal, Ach, we’re still friends, right?” His tail curled up in a question.

Her tail swished in dismissal. “You’re right, Tak, I’m just nervous. There’re so many ways this could go wrong.”

“That’s why we padded all our nests. We paid them enough to not care what the cargo is, and to not go looking for answers to questions they know not to ask.”

“And if they still figure it out?”

Tak’cha let out a snort of laughter. “What are they going to do? Turn themselves in to the Enforcers? ‘Hey, we’re wanted pirates, but we have something you should see.’ I don’t think so. That’s why we hired pirates instead of smugglers.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Pirates are looking at a minimum sentence of half their natural life, while smugglers get a fine and maybe lose their ship. The risk of becoming known to the Enforcers is a lot higher for pirates.”

Ach’tar turned around to face him again. “And if they find a better offer for the cargo? We’ll be left to pay off the clan, when we spent the last of our money on this.”

Tak’cha laughed again. “That would never happen. They would have to pay anyone they could contact to take the cargo. No one outside the clan has a use for one Anigroo, let alone twenty.” He motioned with his tail toward the large hangar door. “Speaking of clan, here they come.”

The pair stood straight, tucking their tails along their right rear leg. The approaching group of thirty were Ch’tinga like Ach’tar and Tak’cha. Two powerful arms with dexterous hands, a sloping spine with a long torso, long forelegs and shorter hind legs. A not-quite prehensile, but mobile tail that almost reached the ground when relaxed. This, they carried in an erect position as they marched in covered in power armor.

The exception was the smaller male at their center. He wore an ornate robe, that no doubt covered an exo-suit so he could move freely in the high gravity. The others stopped in a defensive formation and the robed male stepped forward. “Where is the cargo?” he asked.

“Honored Anathan, the ship should be here any moment,” Tak’cha said.

No sooner had he said that, than the awaited ship descended, setting down just outside the hangar. It detached the cargo container from beneath and took off again.

“I like when others don’t tangle their tails in my business,” the robed male said. “It seems you have chosen wisely. Check my merchandise,” he ordered one of the armored gang.

The armored Ch’tinga approached the container and pointed a scanner at it. “Twenty, but they look a little short for Anigroo.”

“That’s fine, as long as they meet the requirements.”

Ach’tar leaned over and whispered to Tak’cha, “What are the requirements, anyway?”

He whispered back, “They just have to fit in the pressure suits so they can work in the asteroid mines. Small is fine, too big isn’t.”

The robed male turned away from the container. “How are they holding up under the gravity?”

“They aren’t moving around. They’re spread out along the walls.”

“Good. They’re tired. Open it up and load them on my ship,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” He pushed the button on the scanner, but the door remained shut. He pushed it again, growing agitated.

The four walls of the container fell outward, revealing twenty humans, armed with combat rifles and wearing armor. A warning shot came from the humans before aiming at the robed figure and all the ones around him, as one of  the humans called out, “Drop your weapons and get down on the ground!”

One of the armored Ch’tinga tried to raise a weapon and was shot, dropping to the ground. The human that fired said, “Shit, that was center mass, hope I didn’t hit anything vital.”

The same voice that had called out the first time yelled, “This is your last warning! Drop your weapons and get on the ground!”

Before another Ch’tinga could pluck up the courage to try something, the pirate ship returned, followed by an Enforcer vessel. The Enforcer ship set down just past the cargo container and a mixed group of creatures in combat uniforms swarmed out. Most were human, some were the tall, thin Anigroo, a few were Ch’tinga, and others were crab-like creatures that neither Ach’tar nor Tak’cha could identify.

Except for the humans, they all wore exo-suits to adapt for the gravity. The human commander of the Enforcer vessel stepped out. “You are all under arrest for illegal slave trade. If you do not disarm yourself immediately, I will give the order for the assault team to fire for effect.”

She waited for only a second. “That means I’ll order them to shoot you dead! Get it?”

There was a clatter of weapons hitting the ground as all the fight went out of the Ch’tinga. The assault team paired up with others from the vessel and kept the detainees at gunpoint while their exo-suits were powered down, their hands cuffed, and their legs hobbled such that they could only shuffle.

A medic team rushed to shot individual and began administering aid, even as he was loaded onto a gurney and rushed to the ship. Two of the crab-like creatures were picking up the discarded weapons and putting them in a basket attached to their exo-suit.

The pirate Tak’cha had made the deal with left his ship to talk to the Enforcer commander. “Pirates don’t want to be known to the Enforcers?” Ach’tar asked. “It looks like those two are pretty friendly.”

Tak’cha didn’t answer any more than a grunt. The gravity was already making it hard for him to move, and being hobbled didn’t help.

The pirate led the commander to where the pair waited to be led into the ship. He pointed at Tak’cha. “That’s the fellow that hired me, and I’d bet she’s the money.”

Ach’tar looked at Tak’cha with equal measures of rage and incredulity. “You hired a human pirate to smuggle slaves?! Have you lost your brain?”

“What’s the difference?” Tak’cha asked.

The Enforcer commander didn’t give her a chance to answer. She got in Tak’cha’s face. “The difference is, humans find it ridiculous that there is such a thing as ‘legal slave trade’ in the galaxy, and we can only get you for the illegal stuff. If we had our way, all the slavers would go where you’re going.”

“Where are we going?” Ach’tar asked.

“This is Ch’tinga space, but you hired a human vessel. Therefore, you’re going to Earth. We have jurisdiction for the conspiracy portion of your charges, and for attempted trafficking. The Anigroo government has ceded jurisdiction to Earth for the kidnapping, imprisonment, and illegal slave taking charges, while the Ch’tinga government has decided to wash its hands of the Anathan clan and are letting us try the illegal slave trading charges as well.” She did some calculation on her fingers. “You’re all looking at a minimum of thirty or so years … per victim. So, might as well call if life.”

“But, what about the pirate?” Tak’cha asked. “Aren’t you going to arrest him as well?”

The pirate gave him a predatory smile and pulled something out of an inner pocket. He showed them both. It was an Enforcer badge. “Sergeant Hanlon, slavery interdiction unit. You kids should really read your holy book, it’s got some good advice. ‘Better to make no plan,’ etcetera.”

“370-92,” Tak’cha said, defeated.

Ach’tar blew out an annoyed huff. “Told you.”

prompt: Start or end your story with a cat or another animal stuck in a tree.

available at Reedsy

“You dope! You climbed up there — if your ass wasn’t so big you can’t see around it, you could back down the same way you went up.” Ada buttoned up her heavy canvas jacket and put the hood over her head. Some protection was better than nothing against the claws of a frightened jonnylad. With a heavy sigh, she set up the ladder to climb up to the critter’s level. 

Ever since the introduction of genetically modified pecan trees to the colony, Ada and the other animal control officers spent an inordinate amount of time and effort to get the rear-heavy native fauna called jonnylads out of trees when the flowers bloomed. They were well adapted to the native “kakkle” plants, in that climbing to the plant’s flower caused the stem to droop to a level where they could just step off. 

As nectarivores, they were attracted by the sweet smell of the pecan flowers. As one of the most important natural pollinators they were protected by colony law. Their real protection, however, came from the fact that they were almost painfully cute. They had soft, thick, silky, light tan fur with darker points at the nose and tail, and white rings around oversized eyes in a small face, with triangular ears that gave fennec foxes a run for their money. This was paired with a body plan that included narrow shoulders, widening to powerful hips and long hind legs they used to jump away from danger. Their zygodactyl paws had four long claws for both grasping and defense. The way they climbed or moved over rough terrain reminded her of a chameleon.

The animal control office was trying to get tree owners to add a metal sleeve on the trunks of their pecan trees that prevented animals of any sort from climbing. While the orchards had adopted the practice, some landscapers and many homeowners were against it, calling it an eyesore, saying it ruined the aesthetic of their carefully planned gardens.

Ada pulled on her gloves and climbed the ladder with slow, deliberate movements, talking in a soothing, low voice. “It’s okay, little one. I’m going to get you down, so don’t freak out. We’re friends now, right?”

As she climbed closer to the jonnylad it began to whine. Its plaintive distress cry, somewhere between the squeak of a guinea pig and the call of a loon, was well-known in the colony. Jonnylads were not exactly a brain trust, and they had a habit of getting themselves into situations that they found distressing.

Ada reached a slow hand to the frightened creature. From the close proximity she could tell it was a female. “Come on, girl. Let’s get you down.”

No sooner had her glove touched the critter than it squealed once and leapt off its perch onto Ada’s head and shoulders. Rear claws dug into and through her jacket, front claws grasped her hood and small clumps of her hair within. 

Careful not to call out from the pain, Ada kept talking to the frightened jonnylad and made her way down the ladder. Once on the ground, she knelt and leaned forward until her head was on the ground, putting the jonnylad in the sort of position she’d be in had she climbed a native plant.

The jonnylad moved off Ada to the ground. Once there, however, instead of running off as it usually would, it sat on the Earth-originated grass lawn and mewled.

Ada finally got her first close look at the creature. The fur directly below the eyes was stained with dark tears that pointed at a possible illness or allergic reaction. One of her front paws looked swollen, and when Ada carefully picked her up, she could feel how thin she was. 

“Oh, this poor girl is unwell. I’ll have to take her to the shelter and call the vet.” Ada turned toward the homeowner. “Call the shelter, and they’ll send someone around to put sleeves on your trees at no cost to you. And before you complain about the looks, they’re the same color as pecan bark.”

She put the jonnylad in a crate in her truck before going back for the ladder. As she carried it back, Ada fired off a parting shot to the homeowner. “If one of us has to come back to get another animal out of one of your unsleeved trees, you’ll be billed for our time.” 

Ada carried the frightened animal into the shelter’s veterinary bay. “Is doc around?” she called out.

“I’m right here.” The veterinarian was a thirty-something man with a boyish face and ready giggle. He looked into the carrier and cooed at the jonnylad. “Oh, goopy eyes, do you have a cold? And is that a booboo on your foot?”

He continued to baby talk the animal as he opened the crate and lifted her out. There was something in his demeanor and how he handled her that kept her calm, and saved his bare arms and hands covered only by surgical gloves from claws.

He pulled a pecan blossom petal from the fur inside her ear. “This doesn’t belong here. I guess we’ll call you Petal.” He pulled out a tube of artificial nectar, opened it, and laid it on the table near her nose where she could lap at it.

“She seems skinny,” Ada said. “Her back claws work pretty good, though.”

“Do you need me to sew you up?” he asked. “I can do it.”

“Nah, I think I’ll be fine. What seems to be her trouble?”

“Well, aside from an injured foot we’ll have to x-ray to make sure nothing’s broken, nothing too serious.” He rubbed at the base of the animal’s ears. “The reason she’s skinny is she’s a recent mama. She sat her eggs until, I would guess, just a couple days ago. There should be some kits near the area you found her. Just in time for the kakkle blooms.” 

“And the eye goop?” 

“I’ll run a culture to be sure, but I would guess a minor respiratory virus. After not eating until the eggs hatch, her immune system is weakened.” He continued scratching at the base of Petal’s head. “I won’t be able to get an x-ray until tomorrow, but we’ll keep little Petal here until she’s healed up and back to full weight.”

Ada stroked the half-asleep jonnylad. “Thanks, doc. I’m on the overnight shift tonight, so I can check in on her overnight. If anything seems worse, I’ll call.”

“I think she’s going to be fine.”

“Do I need to worry about how much she eats? If I give her too much at once, will it hurt her?”

“These amazing little guys don’t get refeeding syndrome in the wild after sitting their eggs, but there’s all the electrolytes they need in the artificial nectar anyway.” The vet smiled. “I’d recommend giving her as much as she’ll eat.”

“I’ll do that, then. If we’re all done, I can put her in a kennel and finish the paperwork.” Ada picked up Petal, careful of her injured foot. “At least I’ll have someone to talk to tonight.” Petal gave a half-hearted squeak of the sort that earned the jonnylads their odd name.

“Singing jonnylad, Petal?” the vet asked.

“I always thought it sounded like ‘not me mad,’” Ada said.

The vet looked at Ada with narrowed eyes. “Now I’m going to always hear that.”

“You’re welcome. Let’s get you into your bed for the night, little Petal.”

prompt: Let a small act of kindness unintentionally trigger chaos or destruction.

available at Reedsy

Elspeth was not having a good day. In fact, she was on the verge of throwing her hands up in submission. The thought that echoed through her mind drowning out everything else was, “Fuck it. Fuck this, fuck that, fuck everything and fuck you, too.”

She tried to convince herself that the “you” in her thoughts was not a particular individual, just people in general. That wasn’t true, though, and she knew it. If she had seen her weasel of a manager at that moment, her day would have ended in a cell instead of her bed.

As she walked through the city, the exertion helped pull her awareness outside of her own head. She realized that people, especially the non-humans, were moving out of her path the same way they would a rabid dog. Her reflection in a store front made her start.

“Deep breaths, Els, deep breaths,” she said aloud. Facing her reflection, she took some calming breaths. A memory from her early childhood floated to the surface, a song from pre-school.

“Help someone else to feel less sad, to be less mad, to not feel bad.”

The rest of the song had been lost to her, but that line was nearly as insistent as her earlier thoughts had been. She walked into the shop.

It was a side entrance into a shopping complex with a collection of small vendors set up in stalls. An odd combination of farmer’s market, bazaar, expo, and flea market, the main floor was a tourist attraction for the city. Most of the vendors were human, with a scant few alien-run stalls. Most of the shoppers, however, were alien.

Elspeth recognized most of the alien types from her work as a data scientist with the Interstellar Trade Board. She wandered the stalls looking for the vendor with the least traffic. There was an alien at a booth in a tucked away corner of a hall junction, selling what she assumed was hand-made lollypops. The sign was in an alien script, but in careful letters below were the words, “Hend Kendi Stik.”

Her first thought was that it was a terrible place for a stall, until she realized that the small area she’d entered was down one path of the junction, the main, tourist attraction part of the market was the opposite direction, and the crossing hall led to the facilities.

She bought two of the sweets and walked away from the booth feeling at least a little more in control of her emotions. It was while she was attempting to retrace her steps in the maze of the indoor bazaar to reach the door she’d come in that she found a small alien of a type she’d never seen before. Despite the unfamiliar shape of head and face, the six gangly limbs that seemed to be both arms and legs, and large, unblinking, solid black eyes, anyone could tell it was lost.

She knelt down to be eye-level with the alien. “Hi, my name’s Els. Can I help you?” The silly line from the song played in her head again.

The alien stared for a moment, then warbled, pointing at a small, button-like device stuck on the side of its head. A mechanical voice came from a device strapped to one of the forward arm-legs. “Greetings, Els. I am Froo. I am unable to contact the parent, and I cannot find my way to the exit.”

“Ah, little fella lost your mama? Take my hand and I’ll get you to the front where your comm will work better.” Elspeth offered a hand to the small creature before she realized it was eyeing the lollypops.

She unwrapped one and offered it to the creature before unwrapping the other and popping it in her mouth. The alien held the sweet in a front hand, a long tongue flicking out to take small tastes of it.

Elspeth offered her hand again and the alien grasped it with the middle hand on the same side as the hand that held the candy. She rose and led the little alien through the crowd. It walked on three limbs, hand-feet sometimes sliding on the slick floors.

They continued through the hall junction where she gave the sweets vendor a nod and a thumbs-up gesture. By that point, Froo had been licking at the lollypop so much that it was dripping sticky messes from its hand and face. Once past the junction and into the main, touristy area, Froo began to speed up. She figured the tyke recognized where it was and was in a hurry to return to its parent.

Froo tapped the device stuck to its head and burbled. The device on its arm said, in its mechanical voice, “I have contact with the parent. I will go.” With that, the creature just disappeared, leaving Elspeth holding on to nothing.

“Damn kid. Got my hand all sticky, didn’t even say thank you, and then cloaks and bolts.” She sighed. “Whatever. I’ll call it my good deed for the day and go home.”

#

Froo was teleported directly to the combat bridge of the mothership as soon as his contact had been restored. Fraa was waiting for him, anger and annoyance pouring off her in waves. She slapped the lollypop out of his hand, knocking it to the deck where it shattered, small, sticky pieces flying everywhere. “What’s gotten into you?!”

Froo was amazed. He’d never felt better, although everything around him seemed to move in fits and starts, sometimes too slow, other times too fast to register. “I was enjoying that,” he said, once he realized what she’d done.

“Enjoying it too much, Froo. You’re a mess.”

“The ambassador’s offspring is in the market,” he said, “and I placed a tracker on him. We can teleport him here once he’s clear of the inner section. You’ll see when the tracker pops up on the scanner.”

Fraa waved at the display on the wall. “Did you activate it before you planted it? It sure as the void doesn’t look like you did.”

Froo pushed past her to the console and began to enter commands to locate the scanner. “You’ll see. There’s a section of the market that blocks our comms. He’ll have to come out of there at some point.”

  “Get away from there and clean yourself up. You’re making a mess of the console.” Fraa pushed him toward the door.

A slight sizzle and pop caught their attention. One of the fragments of candy had stuck to the side of a connector, melted, and now the connector was smoking. “See what you did?” Froo asked. “If you’d just let me be, then that — whatever-it-is — wouldn’t be smoking now.”

“That’s the gravity plate power, idiot!” She rushed over toward the connector but only made it halfway before the gravity plating shut down. Her rush turned into a floating, headlong tumble into the far bulkhead.

Froo wasn’t certain how he’d ended up there, but he found himself hanging on to the ceiling to keep from floating aimlessly. “That’s probably not good,” he said.

The lights flickered then shut down to pitch darkness until the emergency lights, each with its own battery came to life. An alarm warbled through the ship, as systems began shutting down with loud bangs and groans. “Ooh, that’s definitely not good.” Froo busied himself licking what he could off his hands.

Fraa made her way back to the console where she shut off the alarms and called up the damage display. Gravity was down throughout the ship. Weapons and shields were down. Controls for maneuvering thrusters, main engines, and the fold drive were all offline. Life support was on emergency battery power, and the main generator was fried. One item, as it scrolled by, made her scream.

“The cloak is down! The cloak is down!”

They hadn’t noticed it during the commotion, but Froo saw the line on the damage report. “Huh, all internal and external sensors offline, rescue status initiated. That’s good, right? We’re going to be rescued.”

“No, you idiot, that’s bad. Everyone is sealed into whatever area they were in when the sensors went toes-up.” Fraa growled. “We’re locked in, and the weapons room has been exposed to vacuum, if that system lasted long enough.”

A voice came over emergency comms. Froo’s device was able to translate, although it didn’t seem like the ship’s translator was working. He repeated the message for Fraa as it came in.

”Attention, Erdilian military vessel. You are in violation of multiple statutes under the Perseus Arm Accord.

“You have entered the space of an accord member in a military vessel without declaring your intentions or securing authorization. You have entered that space in a cloaked vessel, circumventing traffic control and putting lives at risk. You have entered a low planetary orbit, endangering satellites and other traffic.

“Stand to and prepare to be boarded. Any action taken beyond station holding will be seen as hostile and will result in lethal force.”

Fraa went limp, which in free fall was even more effective at expressing her resignation than it would have been given gravity. “The Accord will probably use our presence on the battle deck as an act of hostility. We’ll be lucky to not live out the rest of our days in prison.”

Froo looked at her floating form and then at the sealed door. “We should get out of here, then. Manual override.” He pulled himself to the door and placed his sticky hand on the palm sensor. Nothing happened. He tried again and again, finally slapping the sensor for all he was worth.

“The override is tied into the main power circuit,” Fraa said. “No power, no scan. No scan, no override. All you did was make another sticky mess.”

#

Elspeth left the market and saw most everyone looking up. Fighters were scrambling for orbit. She continued her journey home, wondering only for a brief moment what all the ruckus was. It was as she approached her door that she remembered the rest of the song and chuckled. “Share a smile, it’s free,” she sang.

prompt: Start your story with the sensation of a breeze brushing against someone’s skin.

available at Reedsy

A chill breeze raised goosebumps on Li’s leg that dangled off the side of the bed, free from the constraints of the blanket. Her sleep-addled mind didn’t register why at first, but it jerked her from sleep to an alert wakefulness. She’d thought the “graveyard” shift, four days between returning traffic to the station, would be a nice chance to relax.

She lay without moving, feeling the movement of cold air across the floor. Something about it was wrong. Not just a little odd, but full-on ”sound the alarms” wrong.

The silence. The air handlers were in a down cycle, meaning they weren’t responsible for the air movement that had woken her. In addition, the cold air didn’t come from them, so where did it come from?

Li rose from her bed and padded across the sleeping room with bare feet. She grabbed the stun baton that had been propped behind the door since before she’d been assigned to this station. She’d never touched it and had no idea whether it was charged.

“I’m armed,” she called out. “Announce yourself!”

The only answer was a metallic clink from somewhere down the hall, followed by the sound of hard boots on metal. She wasn’t alone, and whoever was there was walking on the walls or ceiling. Magnetic boots. The carpeted floors would’ve hidden their approach better.

Li set the baton down only long enough to slip into her coveralls. With one hand she grabbed the baton and rubbed her thumb on the button. With the other, she pulled her telescoping inspection mirror out of its pocket and extended it with a flick of her wrist.

With the three-centimeter mirror close to the floor, she edged closer to the door until she could see the entirety of the hallway by rotating the mirror. To one side, a creature hung from the ceiling, holding a wire noose. The other direction showed three more of them moving with slow, quiet steps toward her door.

They were tall, thin despite the bulky suits, with four arms and two relatively short legs. Truchian, she realized, and most likely draft dodgers or deserters. They had been losing badly in their war against Arcalla. The one on the ceiling appeared to be struggling to keep itself up and “hidden.”

The air handlers cycled on, warm air rushing through the station. The intruders froze, startled by the sudden noise and wind. Li took advantage of the momentary confusion. She ran across the hallway to the command room and sealed the blast door behind herself.

She checked the docking ring monitors. They had somehow managed to dock a mid-bulk cargo ship to the innermost docking ring without setting off any alarms or notifications. The ship reported as Arcallan which Li took to mean it was stolen.

Li hit the emergency override on the console. She locked the docking clamps on the ship and sent out an automated distress call on the emergency FTL comms band. The intruders had gathered around the door, as she saw on the video feed.

One of them pulled out a tool and began cutting through the wall near the blast door to get to the locking mechanism. She didn’t know how long it would take, but she thought they might well have the door opened before any help arrived.

Switching through the cameras in the station, she found another half-dozen Truchians, busily looting anything not nailed down. Determined to slow them down, Li sat down at the ring control station. Stopping the rotation would remove gravity, but they had magnetic boots, so that wouldn’t do much. If she sped it up, though….

The station was built to maintain rotation up to two-point-seven Earth gravities for up to forty-eight hours. It hadn’t seemed all that important when she read it in the training manual before taking the “graveyard” shift, but the information came in handy now.

She turned up the spin, the rockets that controlled it ramping up in turn. She felt the lateral acceleration and the increase in centrifugal force pushing her down in the chair. Once the station reached two Earth gravities, Li set it to maintain that level.

The intruders were all on the floor, struggling to crawl back to their ship. Not that it would do them any good, as the station had the ship locked down tight.

Li stood in the high gravity. She felt as though she was wrapped in lead. She lifted the baton, which felt far more substantial than it had in the normal three-quarters Earth gravity of the station.

“Ready or not, here I come!” she shouted.

 Beside the door hung restraints. She grabbed all of them and keyed in the open sequence for the blast door. The blast door swung open and Li stepped out into the hall where the Truchians were still struggling to crawl away. “Stop moving. You are under arrest. If you continue to move, you will be hit with the stun baton.”

They continued to crawl, cursing in a mix of their own language and Trade Common. She repeated her commands in Trade Common, but they didn’t stop. She touched the baton to the nearest and pushed the button. Nothing happened.

“Shit!” Li swung the baton down on the Truchian who grunted in pain and stopped moving.

“I’m stopped! I’m stopped!” he yelled out. He called out something in his own language and the others stopped as well.

Li restrained their hands and feet before making her way to the cargo lockers where the other Truchians were located. Only after all of them were in restraints did she return to the control center and slow the station back down to a standard three-quarters gravity.

In spite of the exhaustion that pushed all the way to her bones, she dragged all eleven of them into the holding pen before allowing herself to collapse back on her bunk. The intruders were all too tired, and too restrained, to fight back.

Li was almost asleep when the docking notice sounded. She pushed the comm button by her bed. “Taki Station.”

“This is Captain Sievert, Sol Interdiction Unit Seventeen. Request docking at inner ring bay four.”

“Roger, SIU seventeen. The autodocking sequence will pick you up on approach.” Li got up from the bunk and padded back across the hall to the command center. The intruders had done a fair bit of damage while cutting into the wall. She’d have to write that up.

“Taki Station, we’re docking now. Can you reduce gravity to one-half Earth? We have guests.”

“Reducing spin rate.” Li ran on autopilot to slow down the station.

She waited for the officers by the holding pen. Three human anti-piracy officers and two Arcallan military police officers approached. “We were helping these guys track their stolen military transport, and lost sight of it in the area,” Sievert said. “Figured it would probably be our target when we got the automated call. Who was driving?”

Li turned on the lights in the pen, allowing them to see the tied up Truchians. “There’s your guys. They were probably going to strip the station once they got me out of the way.”

One of the Arcallan officers said something in their own language. Sievert sucked his teeth. “Awkward.”

“What?” Li asked.

“They want to arrest the Truchians as POWs since they stole a military vessel, but SIU rules say we have to ship any arrestees on Sol stations or in human space to Sol for trial.”

Li groaned. “Does that mean you guys aren’t just going to get them out of here and tow the ship away?”

“Afraid so. This is a crime scene, and about to turn into a political circus.” He turned back to the Arcallans, and they argued for a bit before they turned around and headed back to the interdiction ship.

“Officer Philby, and that’s Officer Kurtz,” one of the other officers said. She looked around at the silent halls. “We’re going to be here for a few days. Any place good to eat?”

“No. Everything’s closed for three more days. Graveyard.”

“Ouch,” Philby said. “Who did you piss off to get this shift?”

“No one,” Li said. “I was hoping to get some solid sleep for a change.”

“Looks like that’s out of the question,” Sievert said. “How did you manage to get them all wrapped up in their armor?”

“I spun the gravity up to two Earths, and when they wouldn’t stop crawling, I tried to stun them. Guess I should charge this up.”

“It wasn’t charged?” he asked.

“No. Just had to hit ’em with it like a club. That did the trick.”

Philby held her hand out, and Li handed her the stun baton. She looked at the bottom, clicked a switch on the bottom, pushed the button and watched the arc from the baton to the wall. “It’s charged. You just have to turn it on.” With that, she clicked the switch on the bottom again.

Li took the baton back and looked at the bottom. She felt silly for not knowing how to turn it on  and sighed. “I told you I need sleep.”

prompt: Start or end your story with a character looking out at a river, ocean, or the sea.

available at Reedsy

If there was one place in the universe that could be the literal hell, eternal damnation, perdition, Te had found it and had found himself assigned there. The air clung to him, the unfamiliar scents put his mind off kilter. The ever-shifting surface beyond the rocky promontory where he now stood left him dizzy.

Te turned around to face the building that would be his home for as long as his assignment lasted. The steady structure and solid ground around and behind it helped ease his vertigo.

He grabbed the handle on his luggage, activating its hover mode, and stepped toward the building. He’d been assured that everything had been set up for his comfort prior to his arrival, but he had serious doubts. Not a bit of heat was evident from the building, despite the chill.

As he approached, the cameras around the property caught his image. The building recognized him, opening the front door with a mechanical voice saying, “Welcome, Professor Te A’ota,” in his own language.

The heat inside was near blinding, and most welcome. He hurried in, the door closing behind him. “Thank you? Um, building?”

“I am this house’s AI assistant. You may refer to me as ‘house’ or you may choose a name to refer to me as. Do you wish to choose a name for me?” the house asked.

“Uh, no. House is fine.”

“The current temperature inside is forty degrees Celsius, humidity is twelve percent. If you require any adjustments to either, let me know,” the house said.

“No, no, this is perfect.” Te took a deep breath, the feeling of his scales drying and warming revitalizing him.

“Doctor Saira Andersen, from the university, is here to see you,” the house said. “Should I let her in?”

Te flicked his tail in acknowledgement. Nothing happened. “Yes,” he said, flicking his tail in the same way. “This means yes.”

“I will remember that,” the house said, as the door opened.

Saira stepped in, dressed in a full-body cooling suit. “Doctor A’ota? You here?” she called out.

Te switched to speaking English. “Coming.” He met Saira in the entryway.

“A pleasure to finally meet you in person,” she said.

“Likewise. I believe the proper thing to do when welcoming a human into the home is to offer something to drink?” he asked. “Very rude in my culture.”

“This is your home while you’re here, and you determine what is rude and not rude for yourself.” Saira gave a little nod. “That said, I will be certain to not offer you or any other garians a beverage when you visit my home. I do endeavor to be a good host, after all.”

“I too, which to be a good host.” Te switched to his native language. “House, is there a human beverage available in your storage?”

“I can prepare a glass of ice-water in the dining room, if you like,” the house answered in the same language.

Saira chimed in, speaking Te’s language, “That is accepted,” then switched back to English, “yes, please.”

“I did not know you spoke Otolakk, Dr. Andersen.” Te stepped into the dining room and used an insulated mitt to pick up the cold glass and hand it to Saira.

“Just a few phrases but I expect I’ll learn more as we work together.” She drank down half the glass of water. “Please, call me Saira, and may I call you Te?”

“Yes, you may. Shall we sit?”

“Let’s.” Saira followed him into the living room. It had been fitted with furniture that was suitable for humans or garians.

Te turned one of the chairs, so it faced away from the picture window that looked out on the sea and took a seat. Saira sat in a chair near it, facing both Te and the window.

He motioned toward the window with his tail. “The constant movement … I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it.”

“I understand. I was raised on a ship and never saw an open body of water until I went to university. The constant movement gave me vertigo. Even just a breeze across tall grass was unsettling at first. Now, I find the waves calming.”

“If you say. I will see with time, I suppose.”

“We replaced the environmental systems in this house. Upgraded insulation and materials to handle the temperatures without softening or sagging, added dehumidifiers and a sand bath. Is it too your liking?”

“Very much. I was not expecting such generosity for a visiting professor,” he said.

“We — a bunch of the faculty — got together and demanded it. When we offered to put the CFO up in a tent in Death Valley on Earth, she relented and released the funds to make it happen. This house, is only the first, though, as all the guest houses are being refitted. It can be set for any humidity from five percent to ninety-five percent, and anywhere from five to fifty degrees Celsius.”

Te was stunned. “That is a large investment just to make visitors more comfortable.”

“The university is focused on bringing in more diverse educators from more worlds. That’s kind of the good thing about setting up on a terraformed world in the middle of nowhere.” Saira smiled.

“Is this the university you attended?”

Saira shook her head. “No, I went to Swansea University. On Earth. How about you?”

“This is my first trip off world,” he said. “I grew up in the capital on Oto and went to Kralo Krim.”

“So, you’ve never seen an ocean world?”

“Only in media, until the shuttle dropped me off today.”

“What’s your first impression?”

His tail swished in nervous response. “I thought I had landed in Luklit, closest to what you would call hell.” He forced his tail to stillness. “I hope to understand why humans choose to cover the majority of your worlds with water, when you are land-dwellers.”

“Well, our combined Environmental Engineering course should make that clearer. Just as I expect to learn how the environment on Oto works with so little water.”

Te pushed himself forward slightly with his tail. “And we will learn as we teach how to mold worlds for our respective kinds. There is, though, one thing our course doesn’t cover that I’d like to learn.”

“What’s that?”

Te rocked himself with his tail and pointed at it. “How do humans stay upright and move about so well without a tail to balance?”

Saira laughed. “I’ll recommend some kinesiology books for you. Although, I often wish our ancestors hadn’t ditched their tails. Oh, have you tried on your environmental suit?”

“No. I’m not even sure how to hook it up.”

“I’ll walk you through it.”

They spent an hour going over all the details of his warming suit, from putting it on, setting the temperature and humidity, to taking it off, charging it up and checking for damage. In the end, he knew more about the warming suit than he thought would be involved in creating his own.

When they finished, he sat on the floor and noticed a sound he hadn’t heard before. A rhythmic swish of the waves. “Why can I hear the water?”

“I turned on the external mics,” Saira said. “Just close your eyes and listen to it. It’s soothing, isn’t it?”

“As long as I don’t think about what it is, yes.”

Saira sat next to him on the floor and turned him, his eyes still closed, until he was facing the window. “When you look, just think of it as watching a holo,” she said. “That’s what I did from inside my dorm window until I got used to the movement of the water and the grass.”

Te opened his eyes and looked out at the waves. Steady, rhythmic, rolling. He put his hands on the floor and felt centered, with no dizziness. He took a deep breath of the warm, dry air of his new home.

“I might find the appeal,” he said. “Unless the water gets high.”

“Won’t happen here,” she said with a hint of sadness, “gravity is too low, and the moons are too small to make really spectacular tides. The greatest difference between high tide and low tide is around ten centimeters.”

“Knowing that helps. I saw holos of humans riding giant waves on boards. It was horrifying.”

“You said this place was like your hell. What is your hell, anyway?”

Te watched the waves with a new-found interest. “If you live an evil life, you are sent to a world covered with icy water. You never get warm, you stay sluggish and slow, and your scales soften until they’re in danger of sloughing off at the slightest touch.”

Saira whistled. “That’s rough. We have a saying about doing something regardless of the situation. It’s ‘come hell or high water,’ but that would be redundant for you, wouldn’t it?”

prompt: Center your story on the moment a character realizes their (or someone else’s) intentions aren’t so good or noble.

available at Reedsy

The “All Hands” alarm blared through the ship three times. Jess stood at the ready in her armor, side-handle baton in hand. The boarding team stood behind her, the breaching airlock in front of her.

The slight shifts in artificial gravity, along with the hum of the engines increasing, told her that the ship was trying to run. She listened to the inter-ship comms for a few seconds. “Why do they always run?” she muttered, before switching back to local.

“It looks like they’re trying to run. Prepare for a forced dock.” She looked at the other troops in their armor. Some human enough to pass behind the armor, others with too many limbs, outlandish proportions, and one that stood no taller than her knees. “I don’t have to tell you to be ready for resistance. Watch for weapons.”

“Aye, aye!” they responded in unison.

The thump of the ship against their prey could be felt through the deck. The sound of the seizure clamps extending and tearing into the hull of the target ship carried through the bulkhead. It was followed by the sound of air rushing against the outside of their ship, cut off in a matter of seconds by the emergency seals inflating around the outside of the breaching device.

The light above the airlock turned from amber to green, and Jess pushed the button with her elbow. “Let’s go!”

The airlock doors opened to reveal the cutter on the inside of the breaching clamp finishing its creation of a round hole in the hull of the other ship. The disc of metal crashed into the floor of the target ship, which was about 120 degrees off from the orientation of their own.

With a precision that made it seem like they did this dozens of times a day, the troops poured through into the enemy ship, falling into the differently oriented gravity in such a way that they landed on their feet and on the move.

Most of the pirates they encountered gave up without a fight. The pirate crew was composed of several different species, but all of them seemed unwell. It was obvious that many of them were on the verge of starvation.

The troops met no resistance until they reached the bridge. The captain, a beetle-like creature, was communicating in an unknown language on the FTL comm-link, trying to regain control of the ship’s controls that had been taken over by the interdiction vessel.

Jess moved without hesitation, wading through the fire from beam and energy weapons to the captain. “Interstellar Piracy Interdiction Police. Step away from the comm and raise all your manipulators.”

The captain fired at her with a slug thrower. Through the armor, it was like being punched in the ribs.

“Ow,” she said, as she swung the baton and hit the captain where the head segment joined the thorax. The captain went down and lay unconscious, looking to Jess like a beetle playing dead.

The rest of the bridge crew stopped firing as they realized their weapons were having no effect. Her team was binding the last of the bridge crew as the follow-on team made it to the bridge.

“Report,” the Lieutenant said, pointing a tentacle at Jess.

“Captain here needs medical,” Jess said, pointing at the beetle-like creature that was beginning to stir. “No other injuries we’re aware of, but the entire crew are possibly sick and most definitely starved.”

“Noted.” The Lieutenant looked around the bridge. “When did you find the time to question the detainees?”

“Question? I haven’t questioned anyone.”

“Yet you have determined their health?” he asked.

“Yeah, Orbil, I looked at them.” Jess sighed. “You should spend more time around warm-bloods like myself. Of course, I should spend some more time around cold-bloods like you, because I wouldn’t be able to tell unless you were on death’s door.”

“Yes, as you say, then. I’ll see to it that medics inspect all the detainees.” He slithered over and took command of the scene. “The breach team is released, except for you, Sergeant.”

“What is it, sir?” Jess asked.

“Commander wants to see you in his office.”

“Will do.”

The commander’s office was decorated with nothing more than the flag of the Galactic Union, the flag Chicago, and a copy of the GU Resolution that formed the Interstellar Piracy Interdiction Police.

The commander, one of the dozen or so humans on the ship, was an imposing figure, despite his short stature, close-cropped red hair, and ever-rosy cheeks. He nodded at Jess as she entered.

“Commander McKinney, Sergeant Bexley. You wanted to see me, sir?” Jess stood at attention, out of her armor but still in the undersuit.

“Have a seat, Jess. We can drop the formalities.”

“What’s wrong, Mac?” she asked as she sat in the chair. “Did the state of those guys bother you as much as it did me?”

“It’s a damn shame,” he said, “and it gives some idea why they’re pirates, but that’s not what I wanted to see you about.”

“What is it, then?”

“Lieutenant’s exam is coming up. You ready for it?” he asked.

“Yeah. Piece of cake.”

“Good. Because when you pass, you’re taking Lieutenant Orbil’s place.”

Jess stiffened. “Wait. I’m off the boarding team? Screw that, I’ll skip the exam.”

“No, no. You’ll still be on the boarding team. We should have a Lieutenant there anyway.”

Jess relaxed. “So why doesn’t Orbil lead?”

“IPIP rules require armor for all boarding team members.” Mac shrugged. “Nobody makes armor that works for a squishy, tentacle-having, no-bones, squishing through tiny holes, canaramian.”

Jess tilted her head. “Mac! That sounded incredibly speciesist.”

Mac laughed. “He knows what I think about him.”

“I do,” Orbil answered from the door, “you stiff-jointed, topple-walking, non-stretching … uh … human. Damn, I ran out quick on that one. We still on for drinks later?”

“Yeah. See you then.” Mac waved as the lieutenant slithered out as quietly as he had entered.

“Where’s Orbil going?” When Mac looked confused, Jess clarified. “If I’m taking Orbil’s spot.”

“Orbil’s being promoted to commander and taking my spot.”

“What the hell? They can’t fire you!”

Mac sighed. “They’re not. I’m leaving to run for office on Earth. We’ve done some good work, and it looks good for my resumé, but….”

“It’s time to move on to greener pastures?”

“Something like that.” He pulled a pair of rocks glasses out of a drawer and poured them each a finger of Scotch.”

Jess downed her drink and set the glass on one of the coasters on the commander’s desk. “Just like that? I thought you were a cop for life.”

“I’m going to ask you a question, but I don’t want you to answer me, just yourself. And be honest.” Mac poured them each another shot. “Why did you become a cop, and why did you apply for the interdiction team?”

“Well, I—”

“Nope,” Mac cut her off. “Don’t answer me. Just keep it to yourself. The real reason. Every cop either says they joined because it’s a family tradition, or to ‘help people.’ I know your family isn’t a cop family, and if you think you joined to help people, consider how you felt when you thought you wouldn’t be leading the boarding team.”

Jess sipped at the drink and let the thoughts swirl. “Hmm. I always thought of being a cop as noble somehow, like the protector of others.”

Mac leaned forward. “Let me guess. Given the choice between protecting others from behind a desk and jumping into the fray to nab the bad guys, you’ll always choose the latter.”

“Yeah. Not the greatest of motivations.”

“Hey,” Mac’s voice was soft. “Sometimes why we do a thing, isn’t as important as that we do it. Every pirate we catch, every ship we capture, reduces risk for civilians. The job itself can be noble, even if we who do it, aren’t.”

“I guess ‘helping people’ is a convenient lie to convince myself that I’m still a good person,” she said.

“You are, Jess. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have been worried about the condition of the pirates.” Mac chuckled. “Hell, if you weren’t a good person, you could get the same rush in the ring, fighting for money.”

prompt: Include an unreliable narrator or character in your story.

available at Reedsy

Humans are a noisy bunch of apes, that goes without saying. The fact that they broadcast their noise to the universe at large, well, it was bound to have consequences. Whether those are net positive or negative remains to be seen.

“You weren’t part of any contact team.” The disbelief was plain in Orl’s voice and feelers.

“I told you,” Lir replied, “I was a maintenance tech two on the contact ship. I wouldn’t want to be on the contact team. All politics and shit … boring.”

“But you said you saw humans?” Orl’s feelers flicked in confusion. “How does a maintenance tech—”

“Grade two,” Lir interrupted. “I had some down time and found it wandering around near the officer’s lounge.”

“What did it look like?”

Lir’s feelers pulled in close. “Disgusting. It was walking around with one of those things between its legs.”

“It wasn’t covered up?”

“No. And it was big, too.”

“The thing?”

“No, that was like in the archives. The human. It was as tall as two of me.”

“I thought,”  Orl said, “they were more like our size or smaller.”

“This one was huge!” Lir waved off the less interesting part of the encounter. “But it looked at me and said, ‘Advantageous day-start’ plain as if it was hatched in my home crèche.”

“How did it know our language?”

“When the universities began decoding their languages and translating the human network, the academia shared all that back on the human’s network.” Lir’s feelers waved in annoyance. “Academia always making things more dangerous for the military.”

“But why was it wandering around unguarded?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I was more interested in learning everything I could from it.”

“Like what?”

“You know those Artificial Intelligence things they have? I had to know how those work.”

“And this one knew?”

Lir’s feelers flicked in an affirmative motion. “It said that’s common knowledge. Something they call a Machine-ical Jerk.”

Orl’s feelers again flicked in confusion. Beyond that, a slight tilt of the head segment got Lir talking again.

“A Machine-ical Jerk is a human trapped in a box and forced to perform some task over and over. The first one was forced to play a strategy game, but the new ones answer questions and make up stories and stuff.”

“Why? Is it a punishment?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s something they enjoy. Some sort of fetish or something, you know how humans are.”

Orl tapped a foot on the floor. “I still want to know why it was uncovered.”

“Ugh. Well, I got around to asking that. I wish I hadn’t.”

Orl’s feelers made a “get to it” motion.

“You know how there’s a lot of them doing weird things with each other when they’re uncovered? It’s compulsory. Every human has to do that with at least one other human and post the results on the network.” Lir leaned in close and whispered, “It said it’s a huge experiment to make magic real for humans.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Lir leaned back. “That human was one of their ‘Champions.’ It was famous on the network for doing the ‘research’ with a full million other humans. It was looking for one of us to do it with.”

“Ick! Really?”

“Really. It waved its thing at me, so I just said, ‘No’ and showed it my ovipositor was far more impressive.”

“What did it do?” Orl asked.

“It did that thing where water comes out of the orb-slots on its head, then it kicked the door to the officer’s lounge so hard it ripped the wall free on both sides.”

“They can’t be that strong.”

“Haven’t you been studying their network? You should look it up.” Lir handed Orl a chit with a lookup link for the translated human network. “This has all sorts of information about them, and the human I talked to proved a lot of it.”

“What happened after it mangled the door?”

“I thought it might be dangerous after that. It was twice my size and probably four times my weight, but I couldn’t let it rampage through the ship. I told it that it would have to fight me before it could do any more damage.” Lir struck a fighting pose. “It didn’t know that I’m an advanced master instructor of kannat, both standard and purtet-karnon.”

“Advanced master?”

“Yeah. It didn’t know, but then again, almost no one does. I’m trusting you with it because you seem like the sort to keep a secret. I used to be in the records as the youngest master, youngest advanced master, and youngest instructor until the military hired me to train special forces. They wiped all my records and put me in as a maintenance tech for cover.”

“Hm. Then what?”

“This.” Lir swept through some clumsy movements, until ending off-balance and panting. “I used its size against it, with the purtet-karnon techniques.”

“I see.”

“Yeah, when it ended up on the floor, with its head stuffed between its two legs, it gave up.” Lir posed. “It told me I was the toughest thing it had ever come across and gave me a chit with its comm info. As I walked it off the ship, it kept begging me to stay in contact.”

“Wait—”

“What?”

Orl’s head-part tilted. “If it was uncovered, where was it carrying the chit?”

“I don’t know. I threw it out, anyway. Those humans don’t impress me, you know.”

 Orl’s feelers waved in a pleading motion. “If you can think of anything else about the humans you can help me with, I’d appreciate it. I’m shipping off to the embassy on the human home world in the morning.”

“I don’t know enough about human politics to be much help.” Lir made a noncommittal gesture, said, “Check that network resource I gave you,” and left.  

Orl didn’t find the time to look at the network right away. Instead, the first chance came while in transit.

Being in transit with over a dozen humans, though, Orl was too busy looking for any of them that were anywhere near the size that Lir had described. No such luck. None of them were uncovered, either.

One sat beside Orl and began tapping on a comm device. A mechanical voice came from the device. “Hi. I’m <strange-sound> with the human ambassador’s office. Are you part of the new embassy your people are setting up on Earth?”

“I’m just a security guard,” Orl answered, and watched as the device translated his speech to human symbols.

“Sorry I’m not speaking your language directly,” the human said through the comm’s voice, “but we don’t have the right physical characteristics to make the sounds you do.”

Orl thought about Lir’s claims. Maybe the human champion was using a translation device? Whatever. With a secret unlock sequence of feelers, Orl opened the device that had been assigned and inserted the data chit.

The human looked over and began making the strange noise that humans make when they find something humorous. “What?” Orl asked.

The human pointed at the screen. “I can’t read the text, but I know that site. That’s Reddit. I wouldn’t believe anything you read there.”

Orl looked at the top entry. “Human Champion Accidentally Destroys Alien Embassy Ship,” the headline said. The next said, “Humans Will Mate With Anything — It’s Magic.”

Orl looked back at the human. “All the articles on this site are untrue?”

The human moved its head up and down. “Pretty much, yeah. Oh, I see the subreddit in the link. That one’s a fiction writer’s group.”

“Fiction, you say.” Orl looked up Lir’s service record. Dishwasher, lower class, joined after First Contact, busted twice for disobeying orders and drummed out of service. Closing the device, Orl said, “I believe I must make up my own mind about humans.”

“Good idea,” the human said through the device.

prompt: Center your story around a mysterious forest fire, disappearance, or other strange event.

available at Reedsy

“Impossible!” Fleet Commander Nerl gouged a deep groove in the conference table with his rending claw.

“Commander, I would have to say that while it is highly improbable, the evidence is against impossibility.” Political Advisor Grun laid her far larger rending claw on the commander’s shoulder. “It is up to the fleet to figure out where they’ve gone, while you determine the fleet’s response.”

“But the entire forest … gone … disappeared in the time we spent in transit from the realspace translation.” Nerl swung his tail across the bench and dropped to sit with a heavy thump. Grun’s claw maintained its position through the move.

The intimacy of her claw so near his throat, and the way she now stood over his slumped figure reminded him who was in charge. She clicked a small device and the view on the wall-sized screen changed into a split view.

On one side, a lush forest with a few well-maintained roads, and an uncountable mass of biological material, living plants and creatures, and the enemy, hiding like animals in the trees. The other side showed the same area of the moon, but there was nothing but a scar cut deep into the land, exposing the bedrock that had been far beneath the soil of the forest.

Everything above the bedrock was gone. Not a speck of biological material was left behind in the boundaries of the former forest.

“Remind me, Commander, what were the fleet’s orders for this expedition?”

“Are you testing me, Advisor?” Nerl sighed. “Eliminate all traces of the enemy from the inhabited body orbiting the system’s lone gas giant planet. If possible, bring back live samples and any interesting technology.”

“It would seem that the enemy has achieved the minimum goal for you already,” she said with a laugh.

“Now I know you’re testing me,” he said. “You know as well as I that ‘if possible’ means as long as I draw breath, that needs to be my goal.”

Grun clicked the device again and the before view switched to a series of images from all over the moon. Everywhere there had been a settlement of the enemy had been gouged out to bedrock. What had been agricultural fields were stripped as well.

She brushed the scales of his cheek with the back of her rending claw. “Tell me, Commander, how would you accomplish the same results?”

Nerl sat up a little straighter. “I can think of only two methods. One ridiculous, and the other — wholly unrealistic — relies on tech that doesn’t exist.”

“Humor me,” Grun said with a purr. “Start with the more realistic one.”

“When they transformed the moon to make it habitable, they began by placing lifting plates on the bedrock. Then, once they brought in soil and water and atmosphere, and so on, they built only above the lifters. When we entered the system, the lifters raised in groups, to be picked up in atmosphere by some sort of transport.”

Having said it, Nerl blinked in annoyance. “It sounds even more ridiculous when spoken.”

“No, no. It’s fine, dear Commander.” Grun walked around the room, her tail swaying in lazy arcs. “What was the unrealistic one?”

“Teleportation.” He huffed at the thought. “Some sort of magic technology that allows moving matter from one place to another through some dimension outside the spacetime we understand.”

“Both excellent ideas, Commander.” Grun stood before the changing images on the wall screen as though studying them. “While the lifters sound more plausible, I rather like the teleportation angle. Imagine what the queendom could do with that.”

“Even with that,” Nerl said, “they would need to have transported it all out of the system somehow.”

“Well, once you figure out where they might have gone,” Grun said, as she approached and lifted Nerl’s chin with the tip of her rending claw, “we can go get our samples.”

“Yes, Advisor.” The proximity alarm sounded, and he spun toward the door, leaving a shallow cut along the bottom of his chin from her sharpened claw. He tapped the control panel near the door as blood welled along the cut. “Report!”

“Commander, lone enemy vessel sighted around far side of the gas giant, heavy transport. We have a warp trace from there,” the First Officer said over the comms. “Eighteen possible routes.”

“How long to narrow it down?”

“Hard to say, Commander. It could take as long as—”

“Never mind,” he interrupted. “It’s one ship, we are a fleet. Divide us up and make haste for all eighteen possible throughpoints. Don’t forget, we want some of them alive.”

“Yes, Commander.”

Grun ran her thumb along the cut on his chin, collecting the blood. She licked it off and made a noise as if savoring it. “Don’t make me regret the queen’s decision to give some males command roles.”

“You know I won’t, Advisor,” he said as the flagship transited into warpspace.

---

As the last ship warped out of the system, Sena let out the breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“We’ll keep the jamming running for a few more hours, just to be certain.” Tris shoved her hands into the pockets of her jumpsuit. “I just hope the crew on the Honeypot are going to be okay.”

Sena typed a command and scanned the results on the monitor. “The fleet left in eighteen different directions.”

“Gives them better odds, I guess.”

Sena laughed. “The Valkor Queendom has been trying to take humans alive for the entirety of the war. I kind of feel bad for the ship that tries to board the Honeypot.”

“Yeah, yeah. Dumb lizards versus a cargo ship full of Marines. Still ….”

“You’re worried about your brother.” Sena patted Tris’ leg. “He’s going to be fine.”

“It’s just feels different when it’s a war fleet rather than some pirates.”

“That’s what we’re trained for.” Sena raised the sleeve of her tee-shirt to show her Marines tattoo. “He’s a good kid, and a good Marine, he’ll be fine.”

Sena looked out the window at the fields that lay between the outpost and the forest. Hectares of specifically engineered crops for survival on low-gravity and low-light worlds like this moon. The forest beyond was populated with animals, plants, bacteria, and fungus also engineered for the environment.

“What started this stupid war, anyway?” she asked. “Weren’t we doing an expanded trade deal with Valkor just a couple years ago?”

“You don’t watch the news, do you?” Tris huffed. “Queen Gret died, Furg took over as the new queen. First thing she did was update the official religion, declaring all ‘warm bloods’ as evil. Second thing she did was declared war on all of the endothermic species. Humans just happened to be the closest.”

“They won’t survive without a regime change,” Sena said.

“How so?”

“If a coup or assassination doesn’t take out the queen, the war will wear them down until their entire economy and society collapses.”

Tris hummed. “Yeah, we’re way too good at wars of attrition.”

“Not just that,” Sena said. “They didn’t bother to look with their own eyes. They trust so much in their over-engineered, hyper-complex technology that they couldn’t bother to look down and see that their scanners were showing them a fake image.”

“What did it look like?”

Sena called up the model that had been fed to the Valkor ships. “This.”

“Those are the cutaway views that were generated for the geologic survey, aren’t they?”

“Exactly. Just without the infrastructure overlays.”

The women discussed it over coffee as they waited for an update from the Honeypot.

prompt: Write a story about a misunderstood monster.

available at Reedsy

It landed in the mountains with all the grace of a fart joke in the midst of a love sonnet. In other words, it crashed … hard. The creature that emerged from the rubble was the stuff of nightmares.

Of monstrous size, it moved in unnatural ways, as if animated by some magical force that ignored the rules of physics. It lifted enormous boulders from the area of the crash and piled them around the damaged craft to hide it from prying eyes.

It was like one of the old, rubber-suit monster movies come to life. When my team, tasked with monitoring the wildlife outside the city, saw the ship crash, we turned all our attention to it. The government and military were already aware by the time we called them and were watching our feeds as well.

We hoped — at least, I did — it would fix its craft and return to whichever star it came from or — at least — wouldn’t leave the mountains. When it began to make its way down the mountain, telescopic cameras on the highest buildings followed its movements as I controlled them from a remote monitoring station. Still, we all agreed that the recent reintroduction of the apex predator of the foothills would handle the problem for us.

I watched as the pack surrounded it. The creature’s immense size was most obvious then, as even the largest of the pack barely came to its knee, if that was the correct analogue.

With no way to hear what was happening, and much of the pack hidden by the trees the creature towered over, we could do nothing but hope. When the creature crouched down and disappeared behind the trees, we thought perhaps the pack had laid the creature to rest.

No sooner had we begun to breathe a sigh of relief than the creature stood again. In its arms it held one of the pack, walking out to the open hills. The pack followed, jumping around the creature’s legs.

The creature crouched and set the poor, frightened animal down. With their tails wagging like mad, the pack surrounded the creature. Where the pack was fearsome and dangerous, this creature had won them over in a matter of moments. No doubt it was as dangerous as the pack, if not more so.

When it stopped and looked toward the city, we felt its predatory eyes on us, marking each of us as a target. It began in a loping stride toward the city. It moved faster than anything that size should’ve been able.

All we could do was watch as it approached the city. It reached the ring road and folded its long legs under itself. It scanned the city with its predatory gaze, seeming to measure and take stock of us.

What I at first thought was the creature’s carapace turned out to be some sort of armor. It removed the armor from its hands, revealing long, misshapen fingers covered in something that left it looking slimy. Either that or the creature was, indeed, shedding its carapace.

Either way, the sight triggered some deep, instinctive part of the brain that put most of us on high alert while turning our stomachs in disgust. From our vantage point in the monitoring room, we could see the military vehicles rushing around the walls of the city on the ring road.

Those same walls that kept the wild things outside the city, hid the approach of the military as they approached. Once they cleared the corners though, the creature stood and raised its hands above its shoulders. It looked like it was getting ready to strike.

Having seen the creature’s speed, I feared for the troops that were rushing into harm’s way. Most of the vehicles stopped far short of the giant, while two tanks continued on, one on each side. Still, their presence provided us with audio as well.

The turrets on the tanks began to zero in on the creature, who jumped completely over one of them and kicked it so hard the entire tank spun to face the wilds as it fired. The second tank fired at nearly the same instant, at a target that was no longer there.

The creature grabbed the cannon of the tank it had just kicked and ripped it off the tank along with the turret. It jumped to the other tank and did the same before taking one giant stride away from the city and folding its legs beneath itself again.

The creature opened its maw and shouted out in a rumbling voice. “Stop it!”

“It speaks?” I asked, amazed.

The tank crews were as shocked as I. They stood around the broken tanks, staring at the creature.

One of the military commanders began shouting through a megaphone. I always thought they just had those in the movies, but here it was, in real life. “Do not attempt to approach the city! Any violent action will result in your destruction.”

“No shoot,” the creature bellowed.

The commander gave one of the sort of non-apologies we’ve all gotten used to on the news. It seemed to be enough for the creature, though, who asked for water after downing a wading-pool sized container it had carried at its waist.

What had started with an unexpected crash, followed by a tense moment when tank gunners fired prematurely, turned, at last, into a long, boring, parlay between representatives of the military and government, scientists, and the creature.

As the day wore into evening, the slimy look of the creature’s hands faded, seeming to dry out. It still looked disgusting in the camera’s view. I can’t imagine how horrifying it must’ve been for the people that were right there talking to it.

After hours of talking, a military truck pulling a water trailer stopped near the creature who dwarfed it. When the creature couldn’t get the opening of its water container low enough to fill from the trailer, it picked up the entire trailer and drained it into its container before setting it back down.

I was falling asleep at the controls when I was relieved for the night by someone from another branch. At my last look, the military maintained a corridor around the creature that had sprawled out on the ground, using the coverings it had taken from its hands as a sort of headrest. Meanwhile, it tapped on some sort of device the size of a large screen display, which it held comfortably in one of its grotesque hands.

As I made my way out of the control room, my supervisor told me, “Word is, this isn’t going to over any time soon. Be prepared for more long shifts.”

#

MSG RCVD 21:32 LOCAL:

FROM: Emergency Comm ID SP-4372

TO: Contact Corps Headquarters

AUTO-FWD FROM: Lyra 4 Observation Command Moon Base

SUBJ: Accidental First Contact – suboptimal outcome – also, I’m stranded

Orbital shuttle malfunction, emergency landing on Lyra 4. FTL comms down, I’m relying on the local messaging system with the moon base. Here’s hoping the auto-forwarding is on. Last team rotated out 6 days ago, new team not expected for 9 more days. Stranded on Lyra 4, need extraction and an official Contact team.

Landed high in the mountains, air was too thin to stay there without using oxygen from the survival suit. Have the three survival ration pouches from the suit but no other food. I should’ve eaten breakfast this morning.

Hid the shuttle in the rocks, but I’m pretty sure they saw me come down. Met a pack of six-legged creatures that act like dogs and enjoy attention. They’re the size of miniature poodles and have about the same temperament. I startled one so bad I thought it was going to have a stroke. Picked it up and soothed it and it was good as new.

In the lower elevations I came to a walled city. It looked a miniature movie set. Of course, the residents are no taller than my knees, but still weird.

Got shot at by two tanks, but they both missed. I kicked one so it wasn’t pointing at me and tore the toe of my survival suit. I got a little carried away and pulled the turrets off the tanks. One of the little three-legged guys was banged up a little when I kicked the tank, but no real casualties.

Hot as hell, I’ve been sweating like a pig. I’ve been breathing the air since I was low enough in elevation, so I went ahead and stowed the helmet. I’ve since removed the gloves and turned on the fresh air circulation. I was on the verge of dehydration, but the tripods were good enough to bring me some water. I know – full quarantine when you pick me up. Better that than a casket.

Spent a couple hours talking with the equivalent of a General and a President, along with a couple scientists – they brought images of the Caspian, just before it jumped out of system last week. Apparently, they knew we were here. The General offered what I’m pretty sure was a political nonpology for shooting at me, but most of the words flew right by me. It’s a little slow going as all I know of their language is what I picked up hanging around the research teams.

I have a full protective detail of tripod guys keeping the curious tripods and the “dangerous” predators away from me while I try to get some sleep out in the open. Will update as more details arise.

Sylvia Carter

Orbital Systems Technician, First Class

Lyra Observation Team

P.S. Did I mention I’m stranded?

P.P.S. The survival rations suck. The faster you pick me up, the more rounds I buy the rescue team.