Beyond the Stars: At Galaxy's Edge: a space opera anthology

by Nick Webb

  I landed on the floor with a jarring thud... and found Maeli waiting on me stoically, the swirls of her lustrous robe unruffled and in their befitting place.

  It ought not to come as a surprise to me that this, too, was a skill the Novoloume had perfected.

  Well, one of us no longer felt obliged to project an expected appearance for onlookers. I gathered the copper cords of my hair up off my back and secured them, then ditched the majority of the dress attire. Best to wait to don the hazard suit until we reached the channel.

  She motioned me forward. “The passageways proceed for some distance. If your time is as limited as you say, we should make haste.”

  In my life I had an eternity’s worth of time‌—‌and right now, none at all, so I adopted the haste.

  This deep in the bowels of the Arx, everything was mechanized. Not an organic in sight. Better yet, not a Vigil unit in sight, either, for the Directorate had no need to police their shackled and neutered machines.

  Let the citizens dance the night away above, secure in their warped caricature of a free existence. Let the machines do the work. Peace and harmony reigns...

  ...but not unchallenged. Not tonight.

  After crossing an expansive assembly floor we took a left down a short, wide corridor ending in a force field. Maeli stopped.

  “The maintenance channel begins on the other side.”

  “Understood.” I put my kit on the floor, opened it and retrieved the hazard suit, then began tugging the snug material on.

  Once it covered my waist, I eyed her grimly. “The Arx should be far enough away to survive the blast, but if you’ve got a new locale in mind, it wouldn’t hurt to head in that direction close to now.”

  “I seldom linger in any one location. It will take me a few moments to reach the transport wing and depart, but no longer than it will take you to reach your target.” She paused, looking uneasy. “I’m confident in my ability to achieve shelter, but how will you reach a safe distance before the detonation?”

  Suit in place, I re-secured the utility belt on my hips. “I won’t.”

  The silence hung a span too long. “Oh.” Another gap of silence. “Is it painful?”

  I snapped both ends of the explosives ribbon to the belt. Carefully. “Almost always.”

  “Then your sacrifices for the cause are even greater than I realized.”

  “No need to make a scene over it.” Sacrifice was such an empty word, tossed about by those who weren’t engaging in it to make themselves feel better. I did not and would never know Maeli well enough to say if this was her purpose in using it. Didn’t really matter either way.

  Satisfied the ribbon was secure and not exploding, I gazed up at her. “What else do you have for me?”

  “I’m sending you the drones’ ID frequency. Broadcast it, and they’ll take you for one of their own‌—‌unless you bump into one. So... don’t.”

  “Noted. No dancing with the drones.”

  “Since you don’t dance, I trust that will not be a problem.”

  I laughed for her. These flares of irreverence were probably a clue pointing to why she acted as an anarch. Part of me toyed with wishing I’d get the opportunity to find out more about her reasons... until I remembered I didn’t do attachments.

  I situated the breather skin over my face and reattached the depleted kit to the belt as well. “Time to do this. Thank you for your help, Maeli. Nos libertatem somnia.”

  “Nos libertatem somnia, Eren asi-Idoni.”

  I slowed my respiration rhythm to maximize the effectiveness of the breather skin. Then I stepped through the force field separating the corridor from the entry tube.

  Three rapid steps to the exit and I pitched into space toward the Phoenix Gateway.

  The channel coils would get me to my destination eventually, but I pulled my arms in and mimicked a missile to help the propulsion system along.

  The journey was much like the fall down the service tunnel, excepting the scenery. My deliberate revolutions presented me with views of the Arx, the Gateway, the galactic core and the intergalactic void in turn.

  The once imposing Arx profile quickly shrank in the shadow of the mammoth Gateway. Each ring measured a kilometer thick and a hundred meters wide; the rig driving them weighed greater than six teratonnes. It had been built to last, and no conventional weapon an anarch might procure was capable of destroying it.

  But even the strongest creations could not withstand the application of a fundamental law of physics. Matter and antimatter could not exist in the same space, and their collision was going to result in the expulsion of energy on the order of eight hundred petajoules‌—‌and perhaps most importantly, the annihilation of the matter/antimatter which triggered it.

  Presto, no more Gateway.

  The first of the three rings grew large on my horizon as the terminus of the channel neared. Right before I reached it I brought my legs up to hit the outer boundary at full speed, sprint across its breadth and launch off the structure in free flight toward the center loop.

  The Gateway activated, heralding an incoming vessel from its twin in the Phoenix dwarf galaxy. The pulsing energy slammed into me, sending me spinning off course. I skidded out of control over the rim of the ring and grasped the edge with fingertips to spare.

  Of all the cursed timing.

  I adjusted my grip, trying my damnedest not to pant. Oxygen was a mite scarce resource in space, and now that I was out here I had what I had and no more.

  “Well, hell.” Nobody was apt to notice an Anaden dangling off the side of one of the loops, legs swaying about in open space, right? Maybe I should stay here for a while....

  But there existed no room for such luxuries in my life. The morbid irony implied in the notion I considered the act a luxury didn’t escape my notice as I hauled myself up over the ledge and stood on the flat surface of the ring to survey matters.

  From here, the void to my right loomed as darkly shrouded as the core to my left shone bright. It felt as if I stood on the precipice of not merely a galaxy but existence itself. It was indulgent of me. Also dizzying, but dizzy was not something I needed to be at the moment.

  I removed the ribbon of explosive slabs from my belt, careful to orient it in the correct direction so I would place them in the desired order. The protective layer was set to start dissolving as soon as it came into contact with the metal comprising the exterior; therefore I had to start with the slab bearing the thickest layer in order to buy time to position them all.

  I detached the first slab from the ribbon, stuck it to the metal at my feet‌—‌and ran. Five kilometers to the next target location, and the reaper’s clock counting down on me like a shadow nipping at my heels.

  The balls of my feet barely hit the surface as I soared from stride to stride. Lacking oxygen, my muscles used my body’s stored energy reserves to fuel my movements. The minimal gravitational effect the power rig generated for the drones kept me from flying off into space, while also allowing me to travel at greatly enhanced speed.

  A virtual bullseye marked the next site. The ideal placement and spacing had been worked out in advance by anarch scientists, or engineers, or whoever it was who sat in labs and did those things so people like me could venture outside and... complete the missions.

  I hardly stopped as I released the slab, not wanting to lose any momentum.

  When the clock hit zero I would be dead, but right now I was alive. High on oxygen deprivation, the magnificent view, and the act of running free along the curving arc of an apparatus that warped the fabric of spacetime to sling objects and people 430 kiloparsecs in a frozen, boundless instant. The stars at my back, the universe at my fingertips‌—‌

  ‌—‌a drone clambered up the lip of the ring just as my foot hit metal. I tripped hard over it, landed on my ass with a painful crack and tumbled across the surface.

  The drone landed on top of me before I could move. One of its spindly tool arms sliced through my shoulder as th
e other poked for my face.

  With a groan I kicked at it and skittered away to climb to my feet. Undeterred, the drone sprang toward me.

  “Off you go, machine!” I grabbed it with both hands and hurled it over the side into oblivion.

  The cut on my shoulder hurt like a bitch, but worse, the swipe had sliced open the thin film of my suit. My dwindling life expectancy had now been cut in half.

  But it hadn’t damaged my legs, so I ran once again. Two primed slabs still to place.

  If I failed, the destruction might not be total. This constituted an unacceptable outcome. To my superiors, but mostly to me. I did not do half-measures, and if I was going to die in an explosion of white hot agony, it was going to be a properly majestic explosion.

  One which served as a fitting symbol of how far we were willing to go to dismantle the Directorate superstructure and break its chokehold on not solely us but the entire fucking universe.

  The near vacuum of space sucked at the tear in my suit, but I ignored it to sprint. Only a little farther.

  That was such a lie.

  The light of the core sank above me as the ring bowed in to the void. The marker for the next-to-last location blinked urgently at me, and I readied the drop‌—‌

  ‌—‌and very nearly made a disaster of it. The tiny sips of oxygen I subsisted on were taking their toll, and when coupled with the pain in my arm and leaking suit, I was now less running and more stumbling forward from sheer inertia.

  I tried to drop the slab while moving, slipped and kicked it toward the edge. I lunged for it in panic, overestimated the distance, and fell atop it. Please don’t detonate. Please don’t detonate.

  One thing was certain: my weight had succeeded in sticking it to the metal. I crawled to my feet and rested my hands on my thighs. Dizziness‌—‌the real kind‌—‌blurred the periphery of my vision.

  “Why am I doing this?”

  The stars had no answer for me, but it was okay. I had my own answer. I would run and I would fly and I would die, but I would not be a slave. Not to the Idoni integral and its sadistic Primor. Not to the Anaden Directorate. Not to my anarch superiors. I wasn’t here because they’d ordered me here; I was here to be free.

  I ran.

  Possibly crookedly.

  The journey passed in a blur, and suddenly the final location rushed up on me.

  I placed the slab, knowing it had none but the slimmest protective layer, and flung myself off the ring into space.

  Time’s up.

  I twisted around to face the Gateway with a second to spare. A second to witness the staccato of explosions shine more brilliantly than the galactic core as my body atomized to nothingness, until not even stardust remained.

  * * *

  Milky Way, Sector 59F

  Anarch Post Alpha

  On the other side of the galaxy, deep in a sector the Directorate had long ago abandoned, I awoke with a gasp.

  Sterile smooth walls and cushioned linens welcomed my transition. A fading echo of the flash of agony receded to a memory as I breathed in the oxygen-rich air of the restoration capsule.

  My hand went to my shoulder, but of course the wound was gone. My skin felt cool, still moist from the gelatinous fluid it had resided in until needed.

  Outside the capsule a Curative unit checked my vitals. A chime signaled all systems were nominal, and the protective cover slid away as the virtual image of my handler materialized.

  “Welcome back, Eren. Congratulations on a successful mission. See to your personals, then report in twenty minutes for a briefing on your next assignment. Nos libertatem somnia.”

  Q&A with G. S. Jennsen

  Re/Genesis features a fantastical, far-future world very different from our own. Where did the story come from, and how does it relate to your other works?

  This is the first time I’ve ventured into far-future territory in my writing, but it won’t be the last. When I wrote the story, I was just starting work on the final trilogy in my Aurora Rhapsody series, Aurora Resonant, which is going to take place almost entirely in the world of Re/Genesis. The main characters in Aurora Rhapsody have known for several books now that another universe‌—‌the ‘true’ universe, as it were‌—‌exists alongside our own, but Re/Genesis is the first real look anyone’s gotten at it.

  This story started out as a sort of test run, a chance for me to dip my toe into the waters of the worldbuilding I was going to have to do for the next trilogy. But I quickly fell in love with the character of Eren and completely embraced the story, setting and all. It got me legitimately excited to dive into writing Aurora Resonant.

  Who are your favorite fictional heroes and villains?

  I’m an avid video gamer (though I have little time to play since I began writing full time), so I’d have to say my favorite fictional hero is Commander Shepard from the Mass Effect video game trilogy. Favorite villain? Probably the motiles from Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora Star/Judas Unchained space opera novels. He wrote a number of chapters from their perspective, and their way of thinking, their worldview, their entire essence was so foreign and, well, alien. It was fascinating.

  Where did your love of SF begin, and what authors have inspired you?

  I’ve been reading science fiction since I was a kid. In the old days, I loved Isaac Asimov for the sweeping space exploration and fantastical future, and Frank Herbert for the deep world- and culture-building. Later, Catherine Asaro for daring to mix serious, hard science fiction with romance and Lois McMaster Bujold for daring to have fun with science fiction. William Gibson for painting masterful imagery with mere words and Peter F. Hamilton for telling vast, grand stories.

  Any Works in Progress?

  Always. Aurora Renegades: The Complete Collection, will be released in the fall; it will include all three Aurora Renegades novels and the Apogee short story, plus some bonus content. I’m now deep into writing Relativity: Aurora Resonant Book One. No release date yet, but I’m targeting December 2016. If anyone wants to know more about Aurora Rhapsody, they can visit gsjennsen.com, or go directly to gsjennsen.com/aurora-rhapsody.

  How can fans find you or follow you?

  I love hearing from my readers. Seriously. They can email me at gs@gsjennsen.com; I’m active on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, but I’m also on all the other social media networks (I’m easy to find‌—‌just try “GS Jennsen”). If someone wants to guarantee they’ll find out about new releases, though, the best way is to subscribe to my mailing list.

  Second Place

  by Nick Webb

  November 5th, 2067

  Sweetie, before I answer your question, just keep in mind who the hell I am. I’m the second goddamned human to set foot on Mars. THE SECOND. And more people are moving there every day. Here, I’m nothing. Some nameless retiree in some nameless godforsaken suburb of Dallas. There, I’d be a goddamned prophet or something. Like Adam. Or, uh, Columbus, except less, you know, genocidal.

  FRANK BICKHAM, SECOND human to set foot on Mars, punched the ‘send’ key a little too aggressively, accidentally hitting delete instead.

  “Aw... sh‌—‌” he began, before looking over his shoulder to see if the great-grandkids could hear. Sure enough, the littlest was peering up at him with her wide six-year-old eyes. “‌—‌amwow,” he finished.

  “Don’t you mean shit?”

  He spun around to face her. “Samantha! Don’t say that! Who the hell taught you to say that?”

  “Grumpy,” she said, laughing, pointing at him.

  Frank sighed. “Grumpy,” he repeated. The computer behind him chimed. Another message from his granddaughter, probably wondering why he hadn’t responded yet. When the hell was she going to pick up these rugrats, anyway? He tousled Samantha’s hair playfully.

  She grimaced, and in a solemn six-year-old voice said, “Stop, Grumpy. I’m having a bad hair day.”

  What six-year-old has a bad hair day? “Go,” he said, pointing to the other room. “Go be a kid.”r />
  Samantha ran off, giggling, and Frank strained to read the new message before cursing again and ramming his reading glasses onto his nose.

  So are you going to answer the question, Grumpy? Or just start ignoring me again?

  He punched out the previous message he’d erased as best he could remember and fired it off, before switching to his other message feed from the pencil pushers over at Interplanetary Reserve Inc. Nothing new yet. Dammit.

  Another chime. Her reply was just a terse, Call me.

  “Shit,” he said again, yanking the glasses off and rubbing the bridge of his nose. He didn’t have time for another long conversation with his granddaughter, convincing her why he needed to go to Mars. To go there for good. She had a husband, for god’s sake, she didn’t need old Grumpy around to watch the kids. Why the hell was she clinging on to him? “Aw, hell. Fine. You want me to call you? Let’s talk, sweetie.”

  Before he could even pick up the phone, the computer chimed again, this time from the other feed. It was Interplanetary. He punched over, his hand shaking ever so slightly. Parkinson’s? The doc assured him it was under control. Naw, just nervous. Ha. Frank Bickham, second man on Mars, nervous about what a bunch of good for nothing pencil pushers would say.

  Mr. Bickham,

  Pursuant to our conversation on 10/29/67, your status as Mariner Valley colony member #10,257 is approved. Attached, please find the orientation packet and final paperwork that must be completed by....

  He stopped, and began again, rereading to make sure he wasn’t imaging it. A thrilling jolt ran up his spine.

  It happened.

  He’d done it. Well, almost. One last step remained, but for all intents and purposes, barring any unforeseen unfortunate events, it was going to happen.