Fiction

The Stag

Fiction
BY K.R. Horton

Always Let Your Dragon Fly First Class

Fiction
BY Wendy Nikel

Emryr pinches the boarding pass between her claws. Her ruby nostrils flare, and a wisp of smoke—fortunately not large enough to set off any alarms—emerges from one of them. “Economy? You promised this would be an adventure.”

Sunstroke

Fiction
BY Mark English

We’d ripped the Mess hall and all the barracks out of Orbital to make our Cathedral. We painted everything sky-blue, and mounted a Megawatt halogen lamp at the apex. Here we tremble, rock, cry, and imagine ourselves back on Earth, blessed under the true light.

Lightning Strikes

Fiction
BY Matthew Claxton

Spread her out on a dissection table, and you’d see the artifice, the strangeness. There’s always been as much of the eldritch as of the scientific in her kind, though her designers would never admit it in a peer-reviewed paper. Her bones are carved from mammoth ivory, those white teeth from the opalized fossil jaws of prehistoric crocodiles. Under that butter-smooth skin, she’s all strength and lurking danger.

Northern Cross

Fiction
BY David Baker

There was no way to tell where it came from. Sometimes the pillars descended from above; sometimes they rose from beneath the earth. They rarely stayed in one place for long. “It isn’t the one,” said Joel.

Island of Misfit Toys

Fiction
BY C.R. Beideman

Inside a black pantry in the lab among dismal powdered food stuffs, lit only by a red warning light that might never turn green, squatted a trembling human child wrapped in frayed hex-pattern synthetic, oxygen mask covering her gaunt face, who tried not to breathe, which could at any moment force a fit of coughing and give her away.

From One, Many; From Many, One

Fiction
BY Matt Moore

In the beginning, when the Creator had flowed His lifeblood into the first Adams, He had decreed that a Victor could only be harmed to create a new Adam. Needlessly killing one wasted His bounty, and needlessly wounding one rendered it an abomination of His perfect image.

Memory and Faded Ink

Fiction
BY B. Morris Allen

“Their memories are their pride,” she said, and kissed me. “I am hoping they will teach that trick to me.” I remembered that later, as I looked around our little mokhoro with its concrete floor and mud walls and absence of Tseleng.

I’m Sorry I Couldn’t Make It True

Fiction
BY Wendy Nikel

The look on his face as he stared down at me left no doubt that he was thinking the same thing. His eyes pleaded with me to just flick the dial, just a tiny bit... so I could make things right. So that we could be together, somehow.

Reiteration

Fiction
BY Dirck de Lint

The blue centaur paused at the apex of a grassy knoll, intent upon a passing butterfly, the long iridescent plume of its mane sweeping out behind it in the still air. The season was late, and she hoped the insect might be a nondescript. After a moment of observation, she found the insect’s classification in the shared files. She did not need to, but she still sighed.

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