Pressure Suite - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3

by Various Writers

  Copyright Information

  Pressure Suite

  Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3

  These stories are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination, fictitious, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or aliens, living or dead, would be coincidental and quite remarkable.

  Pressure Suite: Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3

  Copyright © 2011 by Digital Science Fiction, a division of Gseb Marketing Inc.

  All rights reserved, including but not limited to the right to reproduce this book in any form, electronic or otherwise. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book or the individual stories contained herein via the Internet or any other means without the express written permission of the Publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Support and respect the authors’ rights.

  Published by: Digital Science Fiction, a division of Gseb Marketing Inc.

  1560 Argus Street, LaSalle, Ontario, Canada—N9J 3H5

  President—Michael Wills

  Managing Editor—Stephen Helleiner

  Production Manager—Craig Ham

  Pressure Suite: Digital Science Fiction Anthology 3

  Editor—Christine Clukey

  Cover Art—Emmanuel Xerx Javier

  Layout and Design—Master Page Design

  Coil Gun—Copyright © 2011 by Matthew W. Quinn; 50-Foot Woman Over Redgunk, Mississippi—Copyright © 2011 by William R. Eakin; Beyond Valhalla—Copyright © 2011 by Laura J. Campbell; Brae na Ùrd—Copyright © 2011 by R.J. Bell; The Blanket Box—Copyright © 2011 by David Murphy; Pressure and the Argument Tree—Copyright © 2011 by Kyle Aisteach; Skirmish at Heklara—Copyright © 2011 by James C. Glass; The Crossing—Copyright © 2011 by Fox Mc Geever; The Sun Dodgers—Copyright © 2011 by Kate O’Connor; Son of Man—Copyright © 2011 by Jason Palmer

  First Published, September 2011

  (e)ISBN: 978-0-9869484-4-2 (ebk)

  ISBN: 978-0-9869484-5-9 (pbk)

  http://digitalsciencefiction.com

  Preface

  This edition of Digital Science Fiction’s anthology series delves into the corners of the human psyche to push and prod and demonstrate how our species acts under varying degrees of adversity. We didn’t intentionally seek out any particular theme—it emerged and developed its own life as if it was sentient and wanted to emphatically demonstrate its existence. From the slightly humorous to an in-depth look at how the mind can fragment under intense strain, these ten stories cover the gamut of human responses to pressure.

  We extend many thanks to the authors who submit such fantastic science fiction stories to Digital Science Fiction. It’s agonizing (pressure!) to select only ten stories from each set of contributions. We greatly appreciate your work and enjoyed reading each and every story. We’ve seen an amazing range of talent and creativity, and it’s truly humbling to consistently receive such amazing works every time we reopen submissions.

  I’d like to once again acknowledge my partners in crime, Stephen Helleiner and Craig Ham, who make every production run an entertaining experience. Thanks to our design and editorial staff as well for assembling another excellent edition for our anthology series. Digital publishing is an interesting discipline that requires some very specific skills and we appreciate the time and effort that goes into every book.

  Digital Science Fiction is now, a quarterly anthology of compelling science fiction short stories from professional writers. It is published four times a year through popular eBook formats and in traditional print. Our anthologies are directed toward a mature readership. While our home base is Ontario, Canada, our artists, editors, designers, and of course authors, hail from around the world. More information about us is available at www.digitalsciencefiction.com.

  Thank you for your continued support, and we hope you enjoy the following selections as much as we enjoy providing them to you.

  Michael Wills

  Digital Science Fiction

  Coil Gun

  By Matthew W. Quinn

  Albuquerque Launch Field, New Mexico, USA

  11:30 PM, April 10th, 2001

  Fear-sweat beaded in Carl Sanderson’s dark hair as he brooded beneath the bright lights of the control room and listened to the howling sirens.

  Damn it, he thought. I knew maniacs ran the Confederation, but I didn’t think they were this mad. The Boers had never forgiven the Aussies for supporting the rebels in the East Indies, and they had delivered an ultimatum not even the greenest Green in Congress would accept.

  That meant war—a war that would probably destroy the planet.

  He turned around and found himself staring straight into the Adam’s apple of a soldier quite literally twice his size.

  They’re bringing infantry into the control room. Crap. I hope nothing gets broken.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Jane Peabody, the launch tech who sat behind him.

  “There’s been a terrorist attack in Philadelphia!” She pointed at the images of explosions and chaos flashing across the control room’s small television. “They targeted Congress. Someone else tried to bomb Cape Canaveral.”

  She swallowed. “The Boers must’ve sent people in earlier. They planned for this.”

  James Andros, another launch tech, went white. “Oh no,” he whispered. “They’re really going to do it this time.”

  The public-address system crackled above them.

  “Carl Sanderson,” the sterile voice began. “Carl Sanderson.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Major Wallace is on his way to the control room.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  He looked out of the control-room window. Beneath the desolate Sandia Mountains lay the city of Albuquerque.

  He hoped the city would still be there come morning.

  Kariba Command Center, Walker Staten, Afrikaner Confederation

  8:34 AM, April 11th, 2001

  Kommandant James Marom looked up from his desk at the enormous plasma screen depicting military deployments across the planet.

  So it begins.

  Like most career military, he thought the ruling Theonomic Party was being foolish when it predicted an apocalyptic war between the true Christians and the false. However, there were perfectly secular reasons to dislike the United States and its allies. The blery Americans and their friends liked to go sticking their fingers in everything, threatening the values his society stood for.

  He shook his head. Now everyone would pay for it.

  “Submarine-launched missiles incoming,” Majoor Arvind Uys said. Uys, a scion of one of the better Indo-Afrikaner families, sat closer to the screen. Above him, streaks of light erupted from the Atlantic and eastern Indian Ocean and rushed toward the East Indies, India, Arabia, and Africa. Many of the lights vanished as Afrikaner kinetic weapons slashed them from the sky. Several detonation markers appeared, mostly in the East Indies.

  It was not the first time war had touched the region. Marom remembered his youth, serving in the war against the Chinese. The Chinese had attacked the fleet at Batavia with a nuclear torpedo and tried the same with Singapore. Hundreds of thousands had died—he remembered looking for his mate Rudi in the overcrowded hospital, the cries of the wounded, the terrible burns, and the stink of vomit and shit—and it had taken years to decontaminate the blast zones. This war would be much worse.

  He forced his memories of the consequences of nuclear war out of his mi
nd. He had to focus on the task at hand.

  “High-altitude bursts detected,” Uys said. “They’re attacking our kinetic clusters. Landlines still work.”

  “Good,” Marom said. They would at least be able to see what happened. He and Uys were intelligence officers, but now they had little to do besides watch screens and hope to spot something the powers that be had missed.

  He looked at the pictures of his two grandchildren, Adriaan and Emily, as they sat with his daughter and son-in-law on the front porch of their home in the Natal. He touched the picture.

  I’m sorry.

  He thought about how frightened his family must be now, huddled in shelters with their servants and neighbors.

  I’m so sorry.

  Albuquerque Launch Field, New Mexico, USA

  11:40 PM

  Two nuclear explosions leered over San Francisco, silhouetting the Golden Gate Bridge. The image shook with the cameraman. Then the control room plasma screen went black.

  “What the hell!” Sanderson shouted. Shock turned to horror when he realized just how many had probably died.

  Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them, he prayed. May they rest in peace. Amen.

  “They did it,” Major Terrence Wallace, the commander of the complex’s wartime garrison, growled. “They hit a major city. They were probably after the President.”

  “They’re nuts. If they had kept the nukes to Australia and the Indies, there might be a chance of keeping it limited!”

  Now the whole world would burn.

  A human voice crackled through the control room over the public address system.

  “To all American forces, this is General John Thomas from the Montgomery. The Afrikaners have launched a nuclear attack on San Francisco concurrent with an assault on our forces in orbit. We have been authorized to launch a full counterstrike before they eliminate our ability to respond.”

  “No,” Andros moaned. He pounded his fist on the console. “Oh Lord, no!”

  Sam’s up there, on the Montgomery.

  Sam Jackson was one of his classmates at the Academy. Sanderson had attended his wedding only three months before… He sighed and shook his head, and hoped his friend had survived.

  He looked out of the command center window, up to the starry sky. Although Albuquerque’s lights drowned out much of the celestial display, he still saw many stars. Some of them moved.

  Those aren’t stars. Those are satellites, spaceplanes, battle-stations.

  Those lights danced, flickered, or went out. Occasionally, one flared brighter than the others before vanishing. Sanderson almost allowed himself to think the light show beautiful…then he remembered just what was going on.

  People are dying up there.

  If things had gone a little differently, Sanderson would have been one of them. He’d washed out of the Aerospace Academy years ago and went into civilian space work instead, but he’d never actually gotten the chance to go into orbit.

  The general continued speaking.

  “Our kinetic weapons have been hit hard. Fortunately, we’ve got plenty left. We’re focusing our efforts on—”

  Then something roared and the signal cut off.

  “What happened?” Sanderson half-demanded.

  Is Sam alive or dead?

  Wallace scowled before speaking.

  “The Boers just shot up the Monty.”

  Sanderson lurched. There were lifeboats attached to the station and everyone signed treaties not to shoot at them but a lifeboat could easily be mistaken for a missile or shredded by debris. He silently prayed his friend had gotten to one of the lifeboats.

  Wallace’s hand leapt to his earpiece. “Damn it! There goes Belleville!”

  Belleville housed Air Mobility Command. Maybe the Boers intended to limit it to military targets.

  Sanderson snorted. Fat lot of good that’ll do for Belleville. The Boers relied more on nukes than on kinetic weapons, and bigger and dirtier nukes at that. A kinetic strike on Air Mobility Command would spare most of the city; a nuclear strike would not.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Sanderson saw Andros glance at the photo of his family he kept on his console. “My wife and son are still in Albuquerque,” he said, voice quavering. “We figured this would blow over like last time. Can I call them?”

  Poor guy. Hopefully they’ll find a good place to hide.

  Sanderson’s parents were in Billings—probably not a priority target.

  “You’ve got a mobile, don’t you?” Wallace asked.

  “There’s no signal in here. There’s a landline phone right over there—”

  Wallace sighed. “All right. Be quick about it.”

  Andros rose and rushed over to the phone. He quickly dialed a number. Moments passed and his face fell.

  “They’re not answering,” he said. “Can I go topside and—”

  “Civil Defense warnings should have gone out,” Wallace interjected.

  “Can’t I at least just—”

  “No.”

  Wallace turned to Sanderson. “We brought interceptors and kinetics with us. The network protecting the East Coast is damn near shredded, and the one over the Midwest isn’t much better. We’re using ground-based defenses to pick up the slack, but they’ve got drawbacks.”

  Sanderson nodded. If an orbital interceptor missed, another could take its place. If a ground-based missile or laser failed to hit its target, there might not be enough time for a second shot.

  Wallace locked eyes with him. “Get them up there!”

  Sanderson nodded. He felt a barely-perceptible rumble below him as conveyor belts moved metal shells containing the interceptors to the bases of each of the facility’s seven launchers.

  He crossed himself.

  I hope we don’t fuck this up.

  Kariba Command Center, Walker Staten, Afrikaner Confederation

  8:45 AM

  “The Americans’ chief logistics center has just been hit,” Uys said. “Two warheads and twenty kinetics.”

  Marom nodded. “That ought to hurt them.” Although he spoke to his subordinate, he did not make eye contact. The plasma screen on the wall occupied his attention.

  The two superpowers tore at each other in space, on land, and everywhere in between. Australia received the worst of it—thousands of Australians died for every Afrikaner murdered in the revolts their government had aided. The Australians’ modest orbital defenses remained quiet. Either they were saving them for some purpose or the Afrikaners had knocked out their command and control. God willing, it would be the latter.

  Elsewhere, the struggle was more even. The mighty battle-station Rijnsburg, floating above central Africa, hurled tungsten spears ranging in size from crowbars to telephone poles at the Americans and their allies. The projectiles struck at hundreds of meters per second, smashing ships, aircraft, and even parts of cities like the fists of an enraged god. American spaceplanes circled the station, engaging an Afrikaner squadron and the station’s own gunners.

  Though wounded, the Americans’ primary battle-station still floated above the North Atlantic and unleashed its own rain of death. Kinetic weapons hammered the ocean as the Americans hunted for the submarines harrying their coastline. He allowed himself a small smile—using kinetic projectiles at subsurface targets was a tricky business. Hitting the water misdirected or slowed the falling projectiles, costing the Americans several for every sub sunk.

  However, as the battle unfolded, Marom noticed a trend. Despite the Afrikaner first strike depriving the Americans of much of their orbital might, the enemy’s reduced arsenal took a terrible toll regardless. Although the Afrikaners did their best—a small nuclear detonation consumed a group of kinetic weapons descending toward West Africa—the enemy did far better.

  Marom’s heart slowed. At the present rate of attrition, the Afrikaner Confederation and its allies would be in ruins long before the enemy.

  Years of civilian and military educati
on had taught him the horror of losing such a war. With most of the men dead, the women would be forced to offer themselves to Papists and blacks to feed their children. Between slaughter and miscegenation, the Afrikaners would eventually disappear into the races that served them…

  Albuquerque Launch Field, New Mexico, USA

  11:50 PM

  The humming sound of the shells rushing upward on electromagnetic rails always made the hairs on the back of Sanderson’s neck stand at attention. The facility usually made four or five launches a day in peacetime, sending up more if something big was being assembled in orbit.

  Replenishing his country’s disintegrated orbital arsenal was an entirely different animal.

  Sanderson felt the rumbling of the rising projectiles through his shoes. He flinched at the thunderclaps the car-sized shells containing the satellites made as they erupted from the mountainside at supersonic speeds.

  His gaze followed the shells as they rose higher and higher. They disappeared momentarily before rockets flared beneath them. That last kick shoved them into orbit, where the shells would break apart and free their cargos. The satellites’ maneuvering jets would handle it from there.

  Sanderson turned his attention to Wallace, who was watching the launch and listening to updates on his earpiece.

  “How’re things going?”

  Wallace nodded. “They could go better. The East Coast constellations are gone. We have to replenish them from the Midwest and Pacific constellations, which leaves us vulnerable there.”

  The electrical hum filled the control room, followed by a thunderclap. Another successful launch.

  “Although,” Wallace continued, “your facility is helping considerably.”

  Andros suddenly rose from his chair.

  “Now everything’s running, can I go up and—”

  “No,” Wallace said. “You’re still needed down here. I’m sorry about your family, but this takes—”

  “It won’t take long—”

  “The facility is under lockdown. I’m sorry.”

  Andros swallowed. “I’m going up,” he declared.

  “Corporal Jenkins,” Wallace said, raising his voice slightly.