Author : Patricia Stewart, Staff Writer After unimaginable losses, The Earth Alliance was still unable to breach the Draconian military installation on Hydrae II. The fortress sat safely within a w…

Author : J. M. Perkins Jenny sat, tapping her fingers to keep from biting her nails. She was having trouble concentrating. She was having trouble being here and now, in this hot vinyl booth in the …

Author : James Smith She started hallucinating yesterday, and now the center line floats three feet above the blacktop and glows in neon rainbows. Exhaustion makes her slippery in time, and she doe…

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer That’s a Keilvogel up there. I recognise the contrail: a centre line triple the size of the flankers. This world has such a glorious sky. I’ve never really taken th…

Author : Melannie Jay I ran a thumb over the milky flesh of my inner forearm, marvelling at what Mark had done to me. What used to be a knotted mess of puckered flesh had been made smooth again, wi…

Author : Kate Runnels Issa steered the wasp closer to the distant speck in the sky. A flash of light off metal had sparked her attention. It was an Airship, but whose? Dodoma City hadn’t had a good…

Karma Among the Cloud Kings By Brian Trent I. Fifty thousand feet above Tempest’s highest clouds, Antarag Vel-heth invites me to sit beside him in the lobby of Lindorm Refueling Station. It’s a desolate, littered expanse of tables, party-streamers, and plastic people with unceasingly flapping jaws. “What… what are they doing?” I whisper, sweating despite the […]

Author : Joseph Lyons “Hi, I’m Evan.” I introduce myself to the first lady to sit opposite me. “Clarissa.” We shake, left handed so she can purposefully check my bio-clock. She’s nice enough …

Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer Walter was led through the facility flanked by four men in combat armor carrying guns. He’d walked these corridors for nearly a decade, but this was all ver…

Nothing to See Here By Arthur Doweyko There is a comfort in the strength of love; ’Twill make a thing endurable, which else Would overset the brain, or break the heart. ~William Wordsworth I heard a squawk—kind of like the goose call that comes out of a police cruiser. Blinking red and blue lights danced […]

Author : Philip Berry Every child remembers their first visit to the field. They follow the teacher over the low rise that was a burial mound for the first settlers, and down a glass ramp into the …

Author : Kate Haas Alice sat on the railing of Aunt Nat’s fishing pier. It was crowded today. She watched a seagull glide overhead as she picked at her sunburned knees. Alice closed her eyes. The a…

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer The Amour Club is light on love and heavy on by-the-minute. It’s popular with non-johns as the full-time privacy mode prevents surveillance and squashes infobuzz do…

Author : M. Irene Hill A whisking wind stirred up a cauldron of crows that congregated amongst the remains of the centuries-old pagan temple. Accompanying the wind, a young woman of tempestuous tem…

Author : James Langley Dr. Livett tapped at the graphene strap around her wrist and the beachside illusion dissolved into nothing. She stood in the sterile, empty white room; the fragrant ocean bre…

Author : Josh Thompson A planet full of gods is not a nice place. Ancient humans knew this and their legends were full of betrayal and conflict and suffering. If anything, the inhuman powers of the…

Author : Russell Bert Waters Kyle staggered a bit, the bank line in front of him morphed into a field, then a grassy patch of hill, then back to the line. The man ahead of him shot him a suspicious…

Author : Irene Montaner “And have a nice day,” said the cashier, as he handed me the brown paper bag with my purchases inside. “You too.” I smiled back at the young boy in front of me. Probably no …

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer He stands near three metres tall and his smell precedes him. It envelops all who dare approach the being renowned for murderous piracy on a scale never before seen.…

Author : Morrow Brady I grew a heart on my intestine to prove my wife wrong. ”You’re wasting money Eric. You’ll only get cancer” Kara frowned, as I tossed the stem cell unit into the sh…

Author : Matthieu C. R. Cartron The planetary nation of Ozda was illiterate—in English and in many other far away languages that is. It was practical to learn the languages of nearby planets, but b…

Author : Suzanne Borchers Wind ground sand into her eyes, nose, and lips. Her unprotected ears caught crystals of silica within their folds. Her eyes burned. She wanted to pick at the stubborn part…

Author : James SW Paris They came from outside the solar system, in a ship the size of Mars. We thought it was something natural, then it performed a braking maneuver around Uranus, and the planet’…

Author : Henry Peter Gribbin As a national security advisor to top level government officials for the past decade, I have been privy to information which would have scared the daylights out of any …

Author : Jose Corpas At ringside, where you could hear the loose boards under the canvas rattle like an old boardwalk, about twenty fans took their seats. They were joined by friends and relatives …

Author : Jae Miles, Staff Writer Every anniversary of the counterstrike, they show that cursed video. You know the one: snow on the ground, ashes in the air, a lone woman in a ragged battlesuit mov…

Author : Morrow Brady Live again, said the cruise brochure. It should have said lie again. The lift vessel arrived carrying my personal pod cabin and minutes later, PrinceStellar, an orbiting trans…

Author : Linda Breneman “I can control a computer with my mind—from inside a dream,” New Scientist, February 2017. At first I was content to fly like a bird and have brief tea parties with my dead …

Yosemite By D.S. McNab Have you ever wondered why park rangers are so deliriously happy with their job despite the crap pay? The easy answer is that they just really dig nature. But pull back that mossy curtain, and you’ll find a slightly less pleasant explanation. Here’s a hint: It has a tentacle tongue, about three […]

Author : Joachim Heijndermans They won’t stop staring at me. I’ve been stuck here for forty-two hours. I haven’t slept in all that time. I don’t know if I can keep it up. No…