Interstellar Rebellion

"Red Alert!"

Captain Spiff dashed to the bridge of his sentinel frigate, shocked at what he found. Thousands of enemy warcraft descended on the capitol planet's defenses, seemingly out of nowhere.

Emperor Devane had ruled the galaxy for more than 2700 CR (Capitol Revolutions) with no hint of rebellion. Entire systems were wiped out for causing the slightest upset to the Emperor's mood. Coordinating such an attack must have taken years, yet his daily security briefing had offered zero hint of the possibility.

Spiff's final thought was to contemplate what promotion might be available were he to defeat these insurgents.

Stupid Planet Cruises

I can hardly wait. This is going to be a good one I know, another one with no faster than light speed travel. So primitive. Do you ever wonder why anyone would ever go to a smart planet? It would be just like being home in Karg. Boring. The guide to this blue and green planet says they fight and kill each other. Can you imagine something so stupid? We’d better put on armor under our earth disguise, so someone doesn’t kill us at random. We’re landing in a place called Portland Oregon where something called government impoverishes the locals.

From Guest Contributor Doug Hawley

Transient

Leaving is always hard, especially when you think you’ve finally found a place to settle. Among the things I’ll miss about this world and its nascent civilisation are the secret songs hummed by pylons, and the brooding silences of daytime streetlights. Perhaps its denizens will evolve someday to not need that artificial interconnectedness that’s so important to them, but I won’t be around to find out. My time, like theirs, has expired: the Vsanic are here, camouflaged, probing, scouting the planet, and I, a fugitive from their cold, imperial justice, must leave before they find me. Time to run, again.

From Guest Contributor Alastair Millar

Pilgrimage

Sage pushed up her visor and glared into the distance. Through the haze and the light, she could just make out the temple nestled into the gulch at the end of the valley. She registered no sign of life between here and her destination.

After such a long journey, she was too exhausted, both mentally and physically, to truly take in her surroundings or reflect on the implications of her pilgrimage nearing its end.

Sage had traveled one hundred light years to get to this planet. Until this moment, she had not given any thought to what would come next.

Landing

If we hadn’t been watching them for years, pondering their moves, their moods, their governments; if we hadn’t probed several of their species, and winced when they inflamed their planet; if we hadn’t seen the hatred they exacted upon each other, and the disregard they displayed for the welfare of other life, we might have shown them patience, and considered their plea for refuge, when they landed their crude spaceship upon our soil. But we had seen too much, and knew all too well what they were capable of—and so we slew the humans as quickly as we could.

From Guest Contributor Wolfgang Wright

Wolfgang is the author of the comic novel Me and Gepe and the forthcoming science fiction novel Being. His short work has appeared in over forty literary magazines, including Dark Yonder, Oyster River Pages, and Paris Lit Up. He doesn’t tolerate gluten so well, quite enjoys watching British panel shows, and devotes a little time each day to contemplating the Tao. He lives in North Dakota.

That Night

The sky looked heavy as darkening clouds pressed hard against the planet's surface. The two dominant elements fought. It was like an unstable ballet.

"Are you going to fight with me?"

Sam shook his head. "We're not fighting."

He wanted to return to that night in the garden with Lily.

Lightning illuminated the clouds, shattering the heavens, spilling its hot sparks in whirlpools that burst into thunder. Sam's heart pounded fast.

"It can't end here," Lilith cried.

Sam knew what was coming.

"Hey guys," Adam waves. "Beautiful night."

Thunder crashed.

Samael bowed his head crying as the real thunderstorm began.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Wandering Star

I killed the crew of the Wandering Star, humanity’s last hope.

A desperate mission to find a new home. The ship crashed into this lonesome planet of obsidian.

Maybe I’ve lost my mind. But I heard a voice calling me here. A soft whisper in the dark. They called me insane, said I’d gone AWOL. Tried to lock me up.

I wandered the surface, guided by the whisper, until I stood in its shadow, a great five-pointed upside-down black star floating high above.

I wept when I realized why I’d been led here. The leviathan declaring the end of humanity.

From Guest Contributor Rick Ansell Pearson

Rick lives and works in central Mexico. His fiction can be found forthcoming in Year Five: Dark Moments and Patreons, published by Black Hare Press.

The Kiss

I can hardly think of a better way to say goodbye.To the sun and the moon, the water and the clouds,I've always wanted to live on a planet where the sky was blue.

I can hardly think of a better way to say goodbye.The light of a star. The smell of a blooming fruit tree. The kiss of a bare human hand.To the fading flowers on a winter's night

I can hardly think of a better way to say goodbye.To be one last person who will fall in love.Because in death, she is beautiful.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

The Pit

There is an island floating above a shattered and charred plane of earth. It's a little black island, untouched by the sun, hovering above with an unsettling presence. It is awaiting something.

An eerie cosmic wind sweeps into a bottomless chasm beneath the island, the deepest pit ever known to exist.

It stretches from the center of the planet to the edge of reality's outer realms, a limitless abyss that devours anything thrown into it.

Nature's laws do not apply here.

This pit is the only law. It will not be content until it has devoured everything in the world.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Mask

Jonathan burst into the office, waving a bunch of papers and screaming out loud: “It’s all a scam, it’s a hoax. I’ve got proof in my hands. It’s the government trying to control us and all of our movements” as he rips off his oxygen filter.

Just seconds later he starts gasping and drops dead almost immediately.

Proof was indeed given to be very careful with skepticism.

Little did they know he died of acute heart failure.

And that’s why till this date the inhabitants of Planet Ksam are being closely watched and are all wearing very uncomfortable oxygen filters.

From Guest Contributor Hervé Suys