What Fates We Make It was 559 years after the red star called the Crimson Eye went supernova. That same day The Oracle had died, leaving behind her 1,000 years of prophesy meticulously laid out, day by day, on the Holy Calendar. "We must remain on Schedule." Lochrane said into the microphone, but though it was talking to a council of elders seated comfortably on their home world, it was thinking of the death of The Oracle: of how she had looked laid out on her funeral bed, of the particular weight of her armorless hand in its own. It had never seen another personage out of their exoskeleton before, but The Oracle was so old by then that her limbs could
Assassin Symphony "Where were you last night?" Her voice reaches through the wires, small as a firefly by an open fire. "We were supposed to meet, don't you remember? I called and called yesterday but you didn't answer." Discomfited, I hold the phone slightly back from my ear. Her voice issues from the receiver in a dissonant wail. "I'm really worried about you, Calvin. Last time we talked, you didn't seem like yourself." I lean back against the bricks, feeling the cool air rushing up from the street far below. Talons of invisible beasts comb through my hair, caressing my brow soothingly. Sleep, they whisper. "Where are you now?", she asks. Behind
The Siren's Song I I'm humming to give myself shape in the darkness. The older model deep-space cruisers are little more than tin cans with oversized rocket boosters, shaped unimaginatively and coated with mirrors to reflect the sun's light. They are hollow, all their main functions built around a nuclear fusion core that vibrates menacingly even when inactive. In full drive, I can make it from Mars to Earth in about a week. The furthest I've heard of any going in the old model cruisers is out to Io, but even that distance is a little too much for them. The interior heaters always start acting up once one gets out that far. And to keep myself from going
Sta.sh
