Best of Beyond the Stars

by Patrice Fitzgerald

  There was blood everywhere, Eastbrook had all his limbs blown off. But he was still alive when the med vehicle got there.

  I had shrapnel in the legs, and they took out every excruciating piece in one of those trauma centre trailers. I screamed throughout. But they stopped me from bleeding to death, augmented me with cybernetic implants so I could walk again, fight again, kill again. As long as they could keep me alive they could keep on replacing my limbs, almost until I became indistinguishable from the zooks we were fighting.

  I’ll take trailer number two for five hundred, Jack.

  In trailer number three, quietly, Eastbrook died.

  * * *

  I watched an old vid-reel once, about day-to-day life in a field military surgical hospital. In one episode there’s this doctor talking to a chaplain.

  He says, “Father, William Sherman was wrong.” Sherman was a general in the Union Army in the first American Civil War.

  The doctor is saying, “War isn’t Hell. War is worse than Hell.”

  And the priest says, “How so?”

  The doctor says, “Only sinners go to Hell.”

  And the priest goes, “And war?”

  “War is full of the innocent,” says the doctor. “Civilians, children, old people. Doctors and nurses. Factory workers. Soldiers. Almost everyone‌—‌except maybe for the weapons-makers and some generals‌—‌almost everyone in war is an innocent.”

  * * *

  In the hyper-sleep hall on the Miyazaki, I fold my uniform neatly and put it in the drawer underneath. Now fully clad in a sleep-suit, I haul myself into the pod and wait for the fluid that would come in and cover us before we went into hyper-sleep.

  “Sam.”

  It’s Sharkey, on my right.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you. It didn’t happen that way.”

  I nod.

  “I mean, not all of it.”

  “I know.”

  She’s lying down in her pod, looking up at the ceiling. All around us the soldiers are talking to each other, bantering with jokes, other stories. But on her right, the pod is empty, as on my left. She must have noticed that, one of those little things that push you to go further with your secrets than you intend to.

  “After that zook touched me, I didn’t break his wrist. I froze. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t want to make the situation any worse than it was. I didn’t want to die.”

  I say nothing. Her eyes are still on the ceiling, as if that metal stretched far away into infinity. Her hands are clasped, as if she’s praying, or in a confessional.

  “He ripped my suit open and when he pushed my legs apart I screamed. And the truck stopped, and the others came. They were shouting, and at first I thought they were going to stop him. Then they started watching.”

  She is silent for a moment, maybe waiting for a sign from me that I’m listening, maybe for me to say something about forgiveness, or about penance. I don’t know what to say, so I nod again, and maybe the movement is enough.

  “They all did it. Raped me.”

  I watch her for a moment, but she’s closed her eyes now, and presses the button on the inside of her pod. The lid slips down on her. For a while you can see her breath fogging up the glass porthole, then disappear as the hyper-fluid fills the tank.

  * * *

  Dulce et decorum est.

  Sweet and glorious it is...

  We’ve repeated that lie to each other for thousands of years. You’d think we would have learned better by now.

  Yet here we are‌—‌on this godforsaken ship, circling the moon of a godforsaken world, seven hundred and some odd million miles from home, three years’ of travel in hyper-sleep to where our families and children weep for us, and everything we cling to‌—‌everything we tell ourselves is real, every story we tell each other‌—‌is either half of a truth, or a lie.

  * * *

  When Sharkey’s pod is filled, I settle back in my own. The memory material form-fits to me, cushioning my human arms and half-human legs in a familiar embrace. I press my own button, and the casket lid closes on me with a hum.

  Anya, I whisper to myself, and I repeat her name, because she’s who I want to think about, she’s who I want to see in my three-year-long dreams. But sometimes, the past won’t let go of you. When I close my eyes, it isn’t Sharkey that I see.

  It’s her.

  I can still see her very clearly, the zook hiding in the confessional in that church in Echoriath. I’m pretty sure it was a confessional. I remember my grandmother taking me when I was eleven, because unlike my mother she hadn’t stopped believing in a God.

  At the rear of La Iglesia de San Juan Bautista, where Nana went on Sundays, there was a small, enclosed booth with a central chamber, where‌—‌in place of God‌—‌the priest sat, with two smaller booths on either side. You sat kneeling in the dark, until the priest opened up a small, latticed window to your small booth, which was a sign to start fumbling through your sins.

  At the rear of the church in Echoriath there was also a confessional booth. I was the first one there, and I kicked open the middle door. Empty, as was the small booth on the right. I kicked open the one on the left, and there she was, hands clasped and kneeling, whispering through the lattice window to no one.

  “You!” I said, and I motioned her outside with the rifle, but she ignored me, still whispering to no one. “You!” I said again, and she looked at me, and crossed herself.

  She came out, arms and legs bruised and in a rag that must have once been a dress. She was the smallest thing. Her lips were ashen, her eyes were teary, and her face was smeared with soot. Her auburn hair was askew, strewn with caked mud. The smallest thing. So frail, almost inconsequential.

  She raised her hands. There, on the palm of the little girl’s left hand was branded a single letter: ‘R’.

  I stood there, about as close to her as Sharkey was from me, three feet away from the face I see so clearly now, imploring, understanding but not understanding why.

  Then Sarge’s voice: “What the frag are you waiting for?”

  I looked back, and there was Sarge and half my patrol on the altar platform, weapons ready, watching me. I raised my plasma rifle, touched it to her heart, and I fired.

  * * *

  The Miyazaki is turning.

  You can feel the slow rotation of the ship as it turns, and the thrum of the ion thrusters readying their push against Titan’s gravity.

  But the secrets we keep, the lies of war honorable and glorious, they hew a gravity well deeper than for the planet and all of Saturn’s sixty-two moons, an abyss from which there is no escape.

  I close my eyes, and prepare for dreaming.

  A Word from Samuel Peralta

  What does the Latin poem at the start of the story mean?

  The verse from Horace translates as: “How sweet and honorable it is to die for one’s country: / Death pursues the man who flees, / spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs / Of battle-shy youths.” Centuries later, the phrase “Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori” was used in a well-known poem by Wilfred Owen, what he called ‘the old Lie’. That humankind still haven’t learned this, now or in the time frame of my story, is part of the theme of “War Stories”.

  One of the many things I love about your writing is the way you tackle universal themes. This story is no exception. It’s set in some mythical future and yet it could have taken place during the Roman Empire or today in Iraq. How do you manage to write stories that seem timeless?

  I very often consciously choose those themes that are vital and important today - and those are themes that turn out to be universal - such as the inequality of different races or genders in today’s society. Speculative fiction then enables me to use its particular vocabulary to say things about those themes and issues - using the inequality of robots and humans, for example, as a metaphor for today’s inequalities - in ways that can turn out to be very powerful.

  You have an interesting resume
. Can you tell us a bit about what you do along with writing SF?

  I tell people I’m a physicist, entrepreneur, and storyteller. The long story is, I’ve been lucky with my work life, spring-boarding a career in high technology into several start-ups. The longer story is here - https://www.linkedin.com/in/samperalta/

  The success of those projects have given me the freedom to be selective about what I spend my time on. Nowadays, that means managing a portfolio of technology, resource, and media assets that I’m invested in, including mentoring new entrepreneurs, and serving on several boards of directors. My criteria for new projects has also evolved; the work can’t just be financially sustainable, or technologically cutting-edge, but must also have the potential to massively change the world for good.

  Are you working on any new tales? And how can readers best find you online?

  I’m re-working my first novel, The Zoo at the End of the World, and outlining the novel version of my most popular short story, Hereafter. I’m continuing to produce my own anthology series, The Future Chronicles, which is up to over twenty-some volumes now. A new generation of anthologists may be helping carry the torch in this project... we shall see!

  I’m most often on Facebook if you want to chat, but you’ll get to know me best by my writing, and those you can find via www.samuelperalta.com ...There’s always some of me in my characters.

  Just an Old-Fashioned Lust Story

  by Christopher J. Valin

  THERE I WAS, surrounded by five of the deadliest scumbags in the galaxy. Five guys who had murdered some of the baddest of the bad. They were taking aim at me, and all I could think about was making sure she was safe.

  But I wouldn’t exactly call it a love story.

  A lust story, maybe. Is that a thing? All I know is, I would have done anything for her. Anything at all. And she wasn’t even human.

  Don’t go getting any crazy ideas. It’s not like she was a lizard or a Tovarian Devil Slug or anything like that. She was humanoid. Ish.

  She had mostly the right parts, except for the third mammary appendage and an extra orifice that I won’t discuss in polite company. But other than that, she could have walked around any city on Earth without getting too many second glances. Well, not for the fact that she wasn’t human, anyway. She certainly got a lot of looks on account of how beautiful she was.

  A few too many, if you’re the jealous type. Not that I’d know anything about that...

  Maybe I should start from the start now that I’ve laid down all that interesting foundational info.

  You know how you’ve seen a million holo-vids where some rich yahoo hires a scumbag to track down his girl because she got tired of him, or left with a bunch of his credits, or fell in love with another yahoo, or some combo of the above? Well, there’s a reason there’s a million of them. It’s because it’s something that happens when a woman thinks all she needs is a rich guy to take care of her and she’ll be happy, and then it turns out that being rich isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially when you’re not attracted to a guy who feels like he has a right to slobber all over you any time he gets the urge.

  Buuuuuut it also turns out it’s hard to give up the credits once you’ve been mainlining them for a stretch. So, you try to get the best of both worlds. The easiest way is the divorce route, but most of these yahoos are smart enough to get a prenup, so that’s usually out. The nastiest way is to make sure he has a big insurance policy, or added you to his will, and then off him the first chance you get and hope you don’t get caught. And then there’s the dangerous way, which is finding some scumbag to help you get a hold of a good portion of his credits, and then escape into a life where you can spend the credits without the hassle of all that slobbering.

  I’m sure you noticed I mentioned both sides making use of a scumbag. And that’s because, in this particular case, I happened to be said scumbag for both sides.

  You see, Xiomara‌—‌that was her name, or rather the Earth standard approximation of it‌—‌had decided to try to extricate some credits for herself without any assistance, knowing full well that anyone she chose to assist her would probably insist on some slobbering of his own. And, because she’s good at pretty much everything she does, she darn near got away with it. In fact, if her husband hadn’t hired the best of the best to track her down, she would have.

  Now, I don’t usually toot my own horn unless there’s a serious need to toot it, but I should probably clarify here that I happen to be the aforementioned best of the best. It’s a formerly disputed fact that is no longer in dispute. Because if those who disputed it had been correct, then they would currently be considered the best rather than what they are considered.

  Which is deceased.

  So this guy‌—‌let’s call him Big Hank (since that was, after all, his name)‌—‌hired me to track down his wife and his credits, and return the one he still actually cared about (hint: it didn’t have three breasts) and get rid of the other.

  Now, I’m not going to pretend that she fell for me as soon as we laid eyes upon one another, or even that I fell for her. Especially the former, since I’m not much to look at myself. But she knew she was dead if she didn’t get me over to her side somehow, and she happened to have certain attributes that I found very appealing. So we quickly came to an... understanding.

  * * *

  Interlude: There’s an ancient earth song that still streams the metanet occasionally with the metaphor of driving in the passing lane of a land highway, by a band named after an extinct bird of great import to the old earth United States of America. You may know it‌—‌I’m not going to quote it because I don’t want to owe half a year’s pay just to mention it, but you can still find it without too much effort. In the song, there’s a couple of ne’er-do-wells who run around drinking and snorting intoxicants and generally having one big party all the time.

  Well, our life became a lot like that song, except instead of driving around what’s now become the great salt flats on earth in a vehicle running on combustible fossil fuels, we were blasting around the galaxy in my ship, the Red Raptor, spending Big Hank’s credits like they were about to expire. We also may or may not have stopped by some of the galaxy’s most affluent neighborhoods and financial institutions on occasion to refill our coffers. I’m not one to incriminate myself, so I’ll leave all that to your imagination.

  In addition, we often made an appearance at the best pasta joints we could find. Xiomara loved her some pasta, and couldn’t get enough of it. We’d always get extra to have later on board ship. I even got pretty good at whipping some up in my small galley when she got desperate. Turned out she enjoyed my pasta as much as the stuff at the fanciest places. At least, that’s what she told me.

  * * *

  Hank...

  Well, Hank was not happy.

  There were a lot of reasons why Hank felt that way. Not the least of which was that he’d hired me, and there’s obviously no way the second-best scumbag would be able to take me down, even in the awful state I was in a good deal of the time. Or even the second and third best scumbags together, for that matter. But the second through sixth best? That would be a problem. And, thanks to Hank, it did become my problem.

  I took to calling them the Cinque, just because I thought it sounded cooler if I was being chased by a posse by that name instead of just five regular scumbags. I’d been working with and against these guys for years, depending on the circumstances, with the exception of the guy who was Number Five with a bullet. Never met him because he was new to the business of doing what we do, but he was what you might call a “rising star.”

  Plus, I didn’t actually know any of their names. I hadn’t bothered to learn them before, even when I was working with them, and I wasn’t about to start then. So I just referred to them as “Two” through “Six.”

  * * *

  Before I get into too much detail about these new scumbags, let me first tell you a little bit more about myself. I could tell you
I had a horrible childhood, but that would be putting much too rosy of a spin on things. I was orphaned on a barren rock of a planetoid called Finnegan’s Centaur, way out in the middle of the Reach, which had been abandoned by the mining company because it hadn’t been turning much of a profit.

  You’d think they’d let the miners and merchants who were there know, and maybe even provide some transport out of there. But that would be giving them too much credit. They decided it was cheaper just to leave everyone and everything there, figuring it would sort itself out one way or another.

  And, boy, did it.

  At first, everyone just thought the supply ships were running late. Maybe a schedule mix up or some such. But then it started to be a while, and supplies were running low, so the supervisors attempted to call out to headquarters to find out what was what.

  But the comm stations were one of the few items that were actually worth anything on this miserable rock, and the last ships out had quietly taken them, along with anything else they thought was worth saving. From what I can gather, one of the crew thought my mom fit that category, because I never saw her after that last ship left. I’d like to think she was forced into leaving and pleaded for them to take me along too, but I wasn’t so young that I don’t remember what she was like, and I find that version of the story to be highly unlikely. The truth is, she was probably passed around the crew until they were tired of her, and then tossed out an airlock.

  My dad was the closest thing to law enforcement that existed in our small community. He wasn’t a pleasant man, which actually helped him in his job, and he was highly proficient with a blaster. But when the truth about the company had been discovered and the rioting started, he was one of the first to be killed.