31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 17 – Strange Horizon

Cyrano Page wasn’t sure he could do it. In fact, he was almost certain that he couldn’t.

The sublight engines of the stubby Telsat Industries one-man scout ship thrummed through the bulkheads as the Seraphim waited on the verge of the multiverse for the command that would send the ship hurtling toward rift drive velocity.

One lever to accelerate; one button to activate the drive. After that, he’d be through the multiverse gateway and off to some new destination, full of new worlds to discover and new challenges to overcome.

But he just couldn’t seem to muster the will to push that lever forward. He didn’t think he could punch the button.

You’ve come this far, though, he thought. You’re so close to the edge. Just do it. Jump!

He had friends back on Mars, people he had known all his life. His parents were there. His older brother and younger sister. His ex-wife.

Do this, he thought, and you may never see any of them again.

They would gladly welcome him back on Mars, if he decided to return. He knew his parents would feel relieved to have him home, safe and sound. He might even be able to take back his production design job at the Martian Broadcast Network.

No risk there, really. No danger, except…the lack of danger seemed dangerous in and of itself. Cyrano knew he could just as easily drown in the sweet security of boredom and routine. He didn’t hold it against anyone who chose that for themselves, but he just couldn’t see himself settling for that simple life.

He throttled the Seraphim forward, watching the velocity gauge rise. Ahead, the Nocturn gateway rift shimmered an eerie blue. Cyrano let his finger rest on the rift drive button.

Maybe he could work things out with Ann-Marie. Sure, they’d said and done things that hurt, but maybe the damage could heal. Maybe they could trust and love each other again.

Maybe.

He liked his chances better beyond that strange horizon.

 

31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 15 – Changed Fortune

Ask Outversers what they miss most about their old stomping grounds in the home universe.

A lot of them are going to wring their hands and whine about loved ones they left behind. Some lament the lack of literature, music, and entertainment holovids, once so abundant but now in grievously short supply. Others complain that they can’t get the kinds of food they used to enjoy.

None of that really matters to me.

I miss a familiar set of zodiac signs based on easily identifiable constellations that can be found in the night sky.

Telling fortunes based on the signs of the zodiac kept me fed, clothed, and suitably happy for the better part of a decade before the Kamir rift crisis threatened to tear reality apart. I left behind my modest house on Valsho Peak overlooking the churning surf of Timon’s Bay and joined the flood of refugees making their way to the multiverse gateway near Nocturn.

Now I’m in a hovel in the tradeport aboard Comorro Station, washing laundry for whatever Hekayti credits my customers can spare.

I won’t settle for this, though.

In my spare time, I sit in the docking hub and gaze out at the stars.

I’m giving them names. I’m building their legends. Soon, I’ll add the nuances of their omens and portents.

I’ll build a new zodiac.

 

31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 14 – The Zealot’s Gift

“I apologize, but the answer remains an unqualified no.” The dark-robed Opodian peered up over his blunt furred snout at the pudgy human who stood before the gilded entrance of the Great Temple of Ope’mot.

“Are you quite certain?” the gray-haired man inquired, shoving a handful of carrots toward the temple’s gatekeeper. “I offer a gift to the high priest in admiration and respect.” Like the Opodian, he wore robes, but his were a humble brown with crisscrossed carrots stitched into the hem.

The Opodian priest tilted his snout, eyes narrowing as the Outverser presented the vegetables. He leaned close, giving them a sniff, and then scoffed, saying, “They’re dirty. That is your idea of respect?”

“A clean carrot is an affront to the mighty Urf, the mosterer mostest above all,” the offworlder said, his words rushing together.

“You are silly,” the Opodian growled. “Your dirty carrots are also silly. Furthermore, it is no great leap to suggest that your religion, which no one has ever heard of, is the silliest of them all.”

The human clenched his jaw as his eyes widened in anger at the insult. “I am Father Weymouth, zealot of the Urfist movement, and although we may not be well known in these savage reaches among strange stars, we are strong and we are determined. You have besmirched the good name of the one true god, the mosterer mostest. I will have satisfaction.”

“Go away,” the Opodian priest snapped.

Weymouth raised a beefy finger. “Of course! If you can best me in the holy competition of Throw Bar.”

“The what?”

Minutes later, the sanctuary doors burst open from the weight of the battered Opodian priest slamming against them. The pretty robes fluttered in shafts of gleaming sunlight in the rotunda as Father Weymouth waddled in to regard the assembled elders of Opodi’s most revered temple. Six snouts turned first toward the unconscious priest on the floor, and then their eyes came to rest on the fat human.

“In the name of Urfkgar, mosterer mostest, I come to this wretched place with the intent of saving your souls from eternal damnation,” Weymouth said, stepping over the battered creature and extending the handful of carrots to the elders. “A gift, in admiration and respect.”

31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 13 – “13F”

It was somewhat surprising to find a silver-haired human woman sitting in the window seat – 13F – aboard the red-eye shuttle to Hekayt Prime.

Vechkov Prague, holder of the ticket for seat 13E, rubbed at the salt-and-pepper stubble bristling from his pudgy cheeks as he waited for the Lotorian in front of him in the aisle to finish stuffing a fabric-walled container into an under-seat compartment.

Finally, the Lotorian loped back to row 15 and settled into his own seat.

Prague tugged on the brim of his battered brown fedora before easing his girth into the assigned seat. He gave the elderly woman a polite nod of acknowledgement and then proceeded to fidget with the safety restraints.

“Are you going to Hekayt Prime on business?” the old woman asked, her fingers laced together as she leaned toward him with a friendly smile.

His eyes narrowed in the shadow under the brim and his mouth tightened in a faint frown. Vechkov Prague preferred to time travel on trips like this by way of napping. Often, he had the alien language barrier to fall back on as a reason not to attempt communication with his fellow passengers. He didn’t have that luxury now. The best he could hope for was a rapid resolution to the small talk.

“Business, yes,” he said.

“Oh, that’s very nice,” she said. “Where are you from?”

A shrug. “Lately? Comorro Station. Originally, Ungstir.” He suspected that she came from the same fragment of the multiverse that Prague and thousands of others fled during the Kamir rift crisis three years ago. He didn’t ask, though. Best to just let the conversation die, he thought.

“Oooh, Ungstir,” the old woman replied. “Good rugged folk come from there. Miss it?”

“More and more all the time,” he said.

The Lyiri flight attendant closed and locked the shuttle’s forward hatch. He heard the soft whine of the spacecraft’s engines as they warmed up for launch.

“What’s your line of work?” she asked.

Prague rolled his eyes. She wasn’t going to make this easy, was she? “Detective,” he replied.

“Oooh,” she said, brightening further. “That’s interesting! Are you going to solve a mystery on Hekayt Prime?”

“Something like that,” he agreed. In point of fact, he had been hired to assist in the investigation of the recent tampering that had taken place on the Hekayti colony world of Ashkodt, which resulted in an entire generation of Emergent colonists rebelling against their programming. The accused culprit, a Gankri, claimed that he was an Outverser and, despite this seeming impossibility, had passed a lie detector test.

The shuttle started lifting off the deck of Comorro’s docking hub. “Are you a Christian?” the old woman asked, matter-of-factly.

Prague’s eyes widened. His mouth twitched. He could stomach a bit of small talk, but he didn’t think he could tolerate sanctimonious religious blathering. That was a road best left untraveled. Only unhappiness awaited the woman if she pressed. He let his eyes gaze up and down the aisle, hoping to find an empty seat that could grant him safe harbor, but the flight was full despite the late hour.

“Come on,” she urged, resting a wrinkled hand on his arm, “it’s a simple question, isn’t it?”

He shrugged. Then he pulled his arm free to start patting at his trenchcoat pockets, hunting in vain for a pack of cigarettes that he knew he wouldn’t find. Not that the crew would let him smoke, if he could. The shuttle’s thrusters fired, carrying the ship away from the Yaralu on a trajectory and growing velocity to make the transition from sublight to OtherSpace.

“If this shuttle explodes, you know, the Christians go straight to heaven,” she said. “If you’ve been saved, you can join the rest of us in the sweet hereafter.”

The detective grunted. “I’m sure you’ll do okay without me, then.”

“Oh, you’re an agnostic, then? Or,” her voice dropped to a whisper, as if speaking the word might be a sin, “an atheist?”

His normally abundant patience was quickly evaporating. “Ma’am, really, this isn’t appropriate. All that matters is I’m a fellow passenger who just wants to get to his destination in peace.”

“Aren’t you worried about saving your eternal soul?”

“No, not really,” he said. “I’d rather just keep it out of trouble to begin with.”

She gave him a sad, pitying look. “I’ll say a prayer for you.”

“Hey, if it makes you feel better…”

“I just hope it does some good. If we die between here and Hekayt Prime, I don’t want you to go to hell.”

Vechkov Prague wanted to keep his mouth shut, but he knew that the woman wasn’t going to relent. She wouldn’t be satisfied until she dragged him kicking and screaming toward salvation. It wouldn’t surprise him to learn that she was en route to Hekayt Prime to introduce the hooved blue-skinned savages to the glories of Christianity.

“Lady,” he said, “I’ve been tossed in time and space from one millennium to another. My homeworld got blown up by the Nall and then the leftovers got a few blows from the Phyrrians. My home *universe* started falling apart thanks to the tampering of ‘god-like’ aliens using powers they couldn’t control. Now I have some kind of deluded holy roller on my ass about saving my soul. So, let’s get something straight: If there is a God, I don’t think he’s even got my forwarding address, let alone an insurance policy to get me into some mythical holy fish bowl. I don’t think he’s got a plan. I think the crazy old bastard’s just winging it like the rest of us. If we’re going to be saved, we have to save ourselves. That’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it’ll always be.”

Her mouth pinched tight, but then she managed to whisper: “I feel sorry for you.”

“I sleep okay at night,” he said.

The shuttle’s faster-than-light drive kicked into gear, hurtling the vessel along the knife edge of time and space along a tunnel of coruscating blue and white light.

31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 12 – “Reversal”

“Oh, my,” the deposed Zar said, gawking up at the high stone ceiling as it collapsed toward him and the looming Hekayti bounty hunter. He smiled. “So much for your little plan.”

Hideg Fekretu stepped off the lift, confident that he would avoid a violent demise in the clutches of the vengeful Medlidikke pirate, Vard Bokren. The bounty hunter, who called himself Sharm, felt certain that he would walk away with a substantial reward in Hekayti credits. Then came the cracking sound from about sixty feet above them in the gray stone chamber.

“Your old friend Vard has more to offer,” Sharm said as the lift doors opened on the upper level.

“I am not entirely without resources,” Fekretu informed his captor as the lift ascended from the massive cavern in the heart of the shattered planetoid. “I could pay you well. My freedom is worth a great deal to me.”

The Hekayti gave the ex-Zar a shove toward the open doors of the lift that waited to carry them up toward the surface and the ship that would haul Fekretu to a grim destiny. “Let’s go,” Sharm growled.

“We seezz if it workzz, yezzyezz,” the Lotorian said to Fekretu. Sharm tugged the Aukami by the ear, pulling him toward the waiting lift.

“Everything’s set,” Fekretu whispered urgently to the Lotorian. “Just hit the red button!”

Sharm scowled at the ex-Zar and said, “Enough stalling. Vard Bokren wants to settle some unfinished business with you.”

The Aukami almost felt bad for the Lotorians dwelling in the last surviving chunk of their ancient homeworld.

Fekretu set the coordinates in the rift drive console, and then boosted the power for the transition to about two hundred and sixty percent – enough to guarantee catastrophic results. He didn’t want to die, but he definitely didn’t want to die in Bokren’s torture chambers.

 

31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 11 – “Ribas Makes a Friend”

The rock zipped past his snout as Ribas Salek approached the understated storefront at the corner of Zonepf and Klerg in the Tavern District of his home city of Vor.

He felt that rough gray stone, about the size of his fist, whoosh a few inches ahead of his black nose, before it slammed into the glass window to his left.

“Sorry!” shouted a gravelly voice from a passing hovercar. “Not aiming for you!” He turned to get a look at the rock thrower, but all Ribas saw was the tip of a whiskered snout disappearing into the back seat before the tinted window shot up.

He didn’t bother getting the vehicle’s identification number. He hadn’t been hurt. He just didn’t care.

Instead, the black-and-gray furred Llivori allowed his attention to shift to the shattered store window. Through it, he saw a pudgy white-and-gray furred Opodian crouched with a plastic bag gripped in one paw while the other collected shards of glass.

“Well, didn’t you pick a perfect neighborhood?” Ribas grunted, taking a step toward the shop. A sign above the door proclaimed it as “Goddess Goods.” It appeared to be an otherwise quaint little grocery, with neatly aligned shelves that seemed well stocked with provisions. A shame the proprietor wasn’t the right kind of people, he thought.

The Opodian sighed, looking out the broken window pane at Ribas. “The price was appealing. I was honestly surprised. Most of the landlords in this district saw me and immediately wanted to triple the rent.”

Ribas bobbed his snout. “Chances are, the landlord here is counting on someone burning the place down with you inside it. Insurance.”

“That’s an awfully cynical thing to suspect,” the Opodian replied. “I prefer to have more faith in people.”

“Yeah, well,” Ribas shrugged, “I’m guessing you haven’t been around many people.” He crossed his arms, then asked, “So, why here? Why not Ope’mot? Isn’t that where you belong? Why come all the way across the globe to open a shop in a city full of heathens who can’t stand your beloved goddess?”

The Opodian echoed the shrug as he resumed gathering broken glass. “We’re not all zealots, you know.”

“I think you’ll find a lot of Llivori are zealously anti-zealot, and they won’t really look past what you are or where you come from,” Ribas said. “They think it’s easier to hate.”

“Do you think it’s easier?”

The Llivori considered the question, but quickly shook his head. “I used to hate your kind a lot. It’s a lot of work, hating so passionately. Almost as much work as loving. Maybe a little more so, really.”

“So, you don’t hate Opodians anymore?”

Ribas felt his whiskers twitch before the faint smile crept over his snout. “Hate? No. I’m a lazy creature by nature. So much easier not to give a damn at all.”

“Yet you stopped to talk to me,” the Opodian noted, getting to his feet with a bag full of broken glass shards. “It seems to me that someone who didn’t care would just keep walking.”

Another shrug from Ribas. “Maybe I just wanted to know if you’d cut me a deal on some fresh glava fruit.”

The Opodian proprietor looked over at the shelves of produce, where boxes of the yellow-brown fruits waited. He then looked back to the Llivori. “My name is Noban. You are my first customer of the day. I will give you twenty percent off, if you like.”

Ribas clacked his fangs together. “Didn’t ask your name. Make it twenty-five percent and I’ll take it.”

“The window will not be cheap to replace,” Noban replied. “I cannot go lower than twenty-two percent.”

Ribas frowned. “Just how many glava do you think I’m planning to buy? Twenty-three percent. Final offer. I could always just go buy fruit from a reputable Llivori grocer.”

“Very well,” Noban said with a smile. “Twenty-three percent discount for my nameless cynical Llivori acquaintance.”

“Ribas Salek,” the Llivori said. “Now I’m cynical, but I also have a name.”

The Opodian’s eyes widened and the smile showed a few more blunt teeth. “Ah, Salek. Yes. I was told to seek you out.”

Ribas tilted his snout, puzzled. “Oh?”

“Jorta sends his regards,” Noban said, dropping the bag full of glass so that he could swiftly draw two sharp, thin-bladed knives. He hurled them into the Llivori’s chest – THUNK! THUNK! – before the shards smashed against the floor again.

Ribas Salek looked down at the blood soaking the front of his tunic, then poked briefly at the white bone handles of the knives jutting from his chest before he toppled backward on the sidewalk.

“You’re right, you know,” Noban said as he stepped through the broken window and knelt beside the bleeding Llivori. “It is so much easier not to give a damn at all.”

31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 10 – “Home”

An icy wind blew glittering shards of frozen water up the ridge overlooking the ruins of B’hira City, plinking harmlessly off the chitinous black shell of the giant spider-like creature that gazed down upon the wreckage through black compound eyes that had the look of rotten grape clusters.

The last fires had guttered out just three years ago, after the ancient towers had already been abandoned by their inhabitants who were forced to flee by the relentless onslaught of the Il’ri’kamm Hive Mind and the captive warriors of the Hivers.

Okaskatitch swiveled his bulbous body around on skittering spindly legs, then worked his way down a path that led to a cave entrance. The B’hiri passed through that rough stone maw and through tunnels that ultimately brought him to a massive underground ice cavern. New towers rose, thanks to cooperation between the B’hiri and their felinoid neighbors, the Lyiri.

Dark hours troubled the B’hiri during the last years of that great war, when it seemed that they would remain locked in berserker combat mode until the conflict claimed the last of them. But once the enemy had been thwarted, Okaskatitch and other survivors had made the necessary transition to female, so that they could lay eggs to perpetuate the species and regain the clever thinking and sharp reasoning that would allow the culture to rebuild what had been lost.

Now, they had a new home.

They called it the Blue Hive.

 

31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 9 – “Free Flight”

She crouched in one of the uppermost branches of the sturdy gray-barked zomay trees, staring out over the misty green canopy of the surrounding jungle. It was the wilderness known among the Tupai as the Swallowing Screech.

Eela hugged herself with leathery wings as she shivered with nervous anticipation.

It was her day, finally. Her first launch; her first free flight. Her family watched from an observation platform on a neighboring tree, more than a hundred feet below her current perch. They had gathered to see if Eela, now of age and presumably trained by the best aerobatic coaches in the Six Villages, would make them proud or prove an embarrassment like her twin brother.

Eelo’s flight, just three days earlier, had ended within seconds after it began. He had launched himself from this very point, lofted in an arc above the jungle canopy, and then plunged to his doom.

He hadn’t screamed. Most of the failures shrieked with horror all the way down, but not Eelo. His sister suspected that he had seized up in mid-launch, panicked, and then just plummeted to his death.

Now it was her turn.

She flung herself out over the leafy abyss and spread her wings wide. She savored the loamy scents of the jungle through her blunt pug nose. And then Eela soared.

 

31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 8 – “Bad News Ill Received”

The bright green energy bolt lanced out from the rifle’s muzzle, connecting with the big Hekayti smuggler’s broad, scarred blue chest.

His mouth had fallen open and his eyes had widened in surprise before he toppled over backward. In those moments as he fell, the scorching plasma obliterated internal organs and fused them into inert lumps of charcoal.

He was dead before his back thumped on the ground.

The Lotorian perched on the high-backed metal chair upon the tiered dais grimaced, twitching his whiskers as he looked from the smoldering corpse to the pale blue and white felinoid Lyiri who kept her rifle at the ready. “Space what’s left,” commanded Lord Akazar.

Ruler of the underworld deep within the forgotten crevices of Comorro’s ancient core, Akazar never responded well to bad news. Shooting the messenger? Second nature. He watched as the Lyiri and another Hekayti set to work dragging away the remains of the late unlamented Olarn.

For what he had planned, Akazar would still need the supplies that the smuggler had catastrophically failed to deliver.

He leaned back in the throne, lacing his nimble fingers together, and supposed he could wait just a little longer.

But he wouldn’t like it.

 

31 Days of OtherSpace: No. 7 – “Moving Target”

“I don’t think they’re coming back.”

General Charles Avocet frowned as he looked toward the corporal who peered over the scorch-marked yellow boulder. “They’re coming back,” he countered.

The corporal shook his head. “No, sir.” He pointed toward the rolling plains of brownish-gray grass stretching southeast below the ridge where they’d sought shelter. “No sign of them.”

“Well, considering how much more experience you have in this field, I suppose I might as well…oh, wait.” Avocet lowered his voice to a dangerous growl. “Get your head down. Keep it down. If anyone’s going to brain you, Lomax, it’s gonna be me.”

Lomax looked stricken and sad, but he immediately sank to his haunches behind the boulder.

The general pondered, then glanced toward the sky. His brow furrowed. He looked up to his right, noting a rocky path leading higher on the ridge. “We need to move.”

“Sir, you just told me…”

“We need to move,” Avocet replied, “and you need to do it while keeping your head down. Is it really that hard to put these simple concepts together, Lomax?” He grunted, then snatched up his rifle and gunny sack. He motioned for Lomax to lead the way, then followed the crouching corporal up the incline.

They’d gone about a hundred yards before the world turned crackling white and blue behind them from the impact of an orbital cannon blast.

“Won’t be going back that way,” the general noted as the light faded to reveal a twisting column of gray-black smoke where that slope of the ridge had been shaved away.

Lomax boggled at the sight. “Wow, sir. They really hate you.”

“Yeah,” Avocet said, allowing a smirk. “They really do.”