Byron stared out the round ships porthole at the gas giant beyond, its ring illuminated by the blue sun. It looked almost like something out of science fiction, one of the old serials from the twentieth century.
Of course, in those serials everyone had enough to eat.
Frederic sat down beside him. “Rough music abroad tonight.”
Byron frowned [...]
The train is vast.
It stretches from pole to pole of the vast blue sphere of Jarradhoon, a great ring of synthetic diamond constructed by teh native life of the world. A thin sliver of track supported on hundred kilometre high pillars, and at the top the great train spins.
It was thought at first to be [...]
+++ An Extract from Shckun Nk’thron’Kar, (248595 AS) The Devourer – Most Deadly Of Interstellar Species, Karthram university press: Jigorn; Planet RAktoosh; Lor-kan system; Outer Magellanic Cloud. +++
It was bred to devour.
It consisted of thousands of tiny individual cells that swarmed across it’s prey. But although it appeared to be multiple individuals, and the individual [...]
Cities rose and fell over the course of its life, whole civilizations climbed to the lofty heights of power and then succumbed to inefficiency and pride. They crumbled to barbarism, and new cities rose in their places, finally consolidated as massive empires which fell again.
It found it amusing to watch them rise and fall, as [...]
Frozen methane hail struck the ship as it descended through the purple atmosphere of the world known as Rynn. Korin swore as he wrestled for control. The settlers – or Rynndarin as they called themselves – had long since disabled their auto-landers, for they were an isolationistic people now.
The descent raised a few hairs on [...]
Putrid light still hangs in rivulets in the air, stretching its horrific fingers down at me. Even with the setting sun the light is painfully blinding, and so I retreat back down into my burrow, into the darkness. I hate this insomnia. I thought of starting work on my next paper, but a little idle [...]
They came from the hells in the sky. That great rock, the devil’s abode which circles our world like a wolf waiting for food, spat out great metal cylinders that crashed onto the world. From them came great white creatures with single massive eyes, armed with staffs that spat fire upon us. We fled, hid [...]
Right after I’d stormed out of the consul chamber, leaving Emeerin with tears in her eyes, the thin tip of the solar flare struck us. I reached the safety of the lead-lined protection in time, but she did not. Ordinarily she would have lived, if only for a short time before perishing to radiation sickness, [...]
Airan scowled into the green boiling clouds overhead. Those clouds that would choke her as soon as she removed her helmet, those clouds that forced her into this fish-globe.
The humans had acted as though they were granting them a kindness when they landed and handed out the bowls, the breath masks, the chlorine scrubbers. Here [...]
On the bridge of the confederate ironclad Nagoshan, helm commander Ximoran clicked his mandibles in irritaiton. They had barely scored a mark upon the Neridian cruiser’s outer surface.
Lazer blasts, ziridium-fortified shafts of crimson light clearly visible to the naked eye, burst forth from the Nagoshan’s forward cannon, scoring deep into the hull of the cruiser. [...]