The Most Frightening Imaginable Thing

in

With a dozen wounds bleeding and a blade buried in his heart, Vincent gurgled a bloody laugh. "You think you've beaten me," he rasped, "but you haven't even seen my true form." His skin rippled and bulged, something beneath it writhing with inhuman power no longer restrained.

"Can't really be scarier than a genocidal maniac, though, can it?" Vera sounded bored, and she caught the sword by its grip as the transformation forced it out of the once-man's chest.

"It will bring you terror as you have never before conceived." Its voice now resonated with the echo of a dozen inhuman mouths.

"I don't buy it," she said.

The shape-shift stopped.

"I mean, humans are the real monsters," Vera said. "You're monstrous, sure, but the true abomination is a human, as Vince here was before you came along, slaughtering billions. I can't personally imagine anything more frightening than a real, mortal human with the will to murder the entire globe."

"Then that," the monster intoned, "is what you shall face." Its shape-shift changed course, returning to the familiar form of Vincent.

Vera's sword promptly removed his head from his body.

"Luckily, humans are much easier to kill than extra-dimensional monstrosities."

A Tiny, Hidden Thing

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Captain Rodriguez took another solemn step toward the impromptu altar, aglow with emergency candles beneath the periscope. With a firm grip, he pulled Chief Engineer Henschel close enough for a whisper. "Anything?"

"Nothing," she whispered. "Everything checks out functional, just... nothing's functioning."

With a disgusted sigh through his teeth, Rodriguez completed the walk to the altar. Lieutenant Neilly met him there with a knife. "She says you don't have to believe it, Captain," she said. "Just do it."

The trouble, as he sank to his knees in full dress uniform, was that he did believe it. He always had. And he'd buried that belief deep. His mentors and peers would have teased him—which was tolerable—and sidelined him—which was not.

He'd buried it so deep that he couldn't admit it, even now that it seemed true. But, for his crew, he would pretend to believe it and ignore the whispered "told you so" in his head. Rodriguez cut his palm and made a bloody handprint on the altar. "Our shield against the ocean's crush, chariot through the waves, sword piercing our foes... USS Cheyenne, we pray to you."

To his deep resentment and tiny, hidden joy, the engines came back on.

The Stars Beneath the Waves

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The lights flickered in the cold, matte grey of the submarine, then everything returned the scarlet-tinged darkness of the emergency lighting. The background hum of air circulation had already died, replaced by the limping pulse of a grinding motor pushing out thick, too-warm air. The klaxons had quit already, two minutes ago or twenty, Sandra couldn't tell.

"O'Connell?" Sailors didn't normally go armed on board, but Sandra had found a weapons locker pried open and a pistol dropped in a corner during the ransacking. She hefted the weapon now. A scrape of metal on metal seized her attention, and she rounded the corner to find O'Connel in a pool of blood beneath one of the emergency lights, a bloody screwdriver just out of reach beside him.

"Who did this?" The wounds looked fresh, still pumping blood at a pace that couldn't go on for long.

With trembling hands, O'Connell grabbed her by the neck and pulled her close. Another flicker of the lighting showed her in clear relief the infinite black depths of his eyes, the stars within, and the way to reach them. She fell inward, the lights failed again, and she reached for the screwdriver O'Connell had used.

The Limits of Resistance

in

Her recruitment was a coup for the Space Force, especially when she joined the fighter corps. News feeds trumpeted it across the dozen client systems: The spirit of Sol Imperium had reached even Capristani, avowed pacifists since their founding. Even their infamous passive resistance had a limit.

Capremali rose to the top of her class like fine cream and stayed there. She endured being called Emily and veiled comments about rising above her roots. She would have put the scions of military dynasties to shame, had they known any; as it was, she earned their respect.

The Space Force chose her—rising star, ally of powerful families, media darling, and political triumph—to pilot the first Kuiper-class Angler-3, newest space fighter in the Force and valued at the GDP of a small planet.

Her first mission, to disable a refinery on strike, was catastrophic. Three minutes in, her A-3 threw up a dozen warnings including reactor failure, and she ejected, mission failed. Trillions in Angler revaluations followed, finding no clear fault, and Capremali flew three more missions before her superiors realized she was sabotaging her fighter before it could ever harm a soul.

There are more ways than one to passively resist.

The Really Early Edition

in

Holding her morning coffee, Isa opened her apartment door with a smile that fell off her face when no morning paper was waiting for her. She was on the phone to her best friend about fifteen seconds later.

"It's not here."

"What's not where?" Isa heard a yawn; Jet hadn't yet gotten to their morning coffee.

"It. It."

"Oh." Their voice sharpened. "Well, um, maybe whoever sends you your paper a day early so you could mess with fate thinks you need a day off?"

"Ha ha, this is serious." Isa paced endlessly. "What could do this? There could be a war."

"There is a war."

"I mean a nuclear war! Or a meteorite? What if we're all dead this time tomorrow?"

"What would you do if it were?" The question froze Isa.

"I..."

"Yeah, so, how would you stop nukes? Or an asteroid?"

Isa fell onto her couch. "Nothing. I guess."

"Right. So breathe, babe." Isa closed her eyes and did that. "Also, it's a paper shortage."

"What?"

"The Tribune says online there's an acute shortage and they won't have a paper edition tomorrow."

"Uh..."

"I'm going for breakfast. Byeeeee!"

Isa blinked. "I guess I have a day off."