When I told Saurubi Cerros Syrhas my story, how raiders had attacked my world, killed the adults and took the children as slaves, she looked at me with her great, amber eyes and declared, “Obvious you were not where the Mother Universe intended you to be.” I was shocked. Sickened. Angry with her cold analysis. […]
Humans try to put a face on the snarling maw of darkness that is space. They try to tame it. It’s too big for that. Once you wander away from the safety of the herd, the wolves slink in. Then there is only one law in space; kill or be killed. Learn who your friends […]
Before the Whooex Union we had happily blundered into other alliances’ star systems all the time; but, since we were Stone Age technology compared to theirs, it hadn’t really mattered. We had an open field out toward the Crab Nebula, so we weren’t trying to move into anyone’s space. Once we joined the Whooex, the […]
When Humans finally met aliens we didn’t encounter just one species. We met a whole Union of Stars. And it wasn’t our dazzling charm that drew them to us: it was our mode of space travel. In the mid-twenty-first century, we found a crashed alien ship on one of Saturn’s moons and the real Human […]
Do I mind dark, tight places? No. I’m from a small ship and that description covers at least seventy-five percent of my environments. The other quarter is endless horizons, like the dockring on a station or the Deep Dark. Given a few minutes to adjust, I can hack the shift between the two. That’s not […]
I like my life. Even if Saurubi and I are down to eating energy pills to survive, or recycling our own piss to the point where it’s dangerous, it’s okay. We made the stupid decisions that got us there. And we’ll make the stupid or brilliant play that gets us back out again. No one […]
I dream. I dream every time I sleep. It terrifies me. The Earth Alliance Marines thought it put a fire in my belly, a little bit of psycho in my head. They said it gave me a purpose. They put me on the frontier, enforcing EA law on the stations, asteroid colonies, junker cities and […]
The hard reality of space Space is not a nice place. It’s cold. It’s lonely. It does not know compassion and it does not forgive. It makes you hollow by stealing the things you know and the people you love. It eats your body and sucks away your memories. It twists time so that everything […]
Taking the Stars... 