Nash Bannon waited at the crowded tram stop, people pouring out of the Flinders Street railway station, and gave a sigh of resignation. Melbourne’s skyline glowed in clear sunshine with a promise of another mild spring day. Ordinarily, he would have walked up Collins Street to see his client, but he hadn’t jammed for […]
Tom followed the black Toyota Prado down the narrow side street filled with parked cars toward the arterial roundabout. The Prado slowed and stopped. Cars coming down on his right were forced to wait for the pedestrian crossing light to turn green. In adaptive cruise control mode, Tom’s Subaru Impreza automatically slowed and stopped […]
-1- “…And then Man created STOR, and STOR was given dominion over the whole Earth. Then Man went to the stars in search of glory and beauty while STOR kept Earth safe from her enemies. STOR waited patiently. Centuries passed and STOR still waited for Man to return from the stars. STOR worked hard […]
With a clash of grinding transmission and a snarl from the diesel, the coach swayed as it entered the parking ramp. I squinted through the window, the glass smeared with frost, sparkling from the fluorescent strips that hung from power poles outside. The brakes sighed and we squealed to a stop, the whir of […]
I favored Blink’s Bar after a movie or a do-it-yourself dinner in my apartment. Inside, they played thin, reedy music, the kind of stuff that used to be popular in the eighties—preferred by the oldies and the sentimental at heart; like me perhaps. Half the time I couldn’t hear anything anyway above the blanket […]
Paul wished the priest would cut the sermon short. The dreary monotone tempted him to stand up and walk out. He could not do that, of course. Valerie and the rest of the family would never, ever forgive him for such a gross breach of manners. He did not even know what the sermon […]
In a burst of scintillation the ship emerged from subspace high above the planetary plane, beyond the gravity well of the small yellow star. The ship’s secondary shield grid flared in violet discharge, then stabilized. It paused, oriented itself and moved deliberately down into the inner system toward the bright points of a double […]
-1- I could see the locus points form around the Free Planets cruiser’s shields and knew what was coming. Twin tracks of pale blue ionization lanced toward my ship and the deck shuddered beneath my feet. Our return fire made the enemy’s screens flare and metal boiled from the outer frames where the primary shield […]
It was one of those silly things. Last night, pounding away on the keyboard, the words flowing as the thrill of creation coursed through Martin, he wanted to finish the chapter while the scene remained vivid in his mind. His characters took advantage of this momentary freedom to produce some striking dialogue. He finished […]