An explosion shook the prison compound. Khalen leapt off his cot and sprinted over to the forcefield that served as a door. The guards at the end of the hall were reaching for weapons and bolting toward the outer courtyard.
A brilliant flash came from behind Khalen.
It was completely transforming the Moon, and I was the last hope of stopping it.
As I waited on the balcony of the one human-accessible building there, I stared out at the vast network of steel and silicon. It looked like the inside of a laptop, but on a monstrous scale. There were trains, ships, and satellites moving in a myriad of ways, spinning and whizzing and drifting, a jigsaw in perpetual motion. I felt dizzy and weak and had to turn away.
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The salty smell of the harbor in Baltimore hit my nose and I know exactly where and when I am.
I trip over my own feet, still woozy from the jump, and catch myself on a newspaper stand. To my great and pleasant surprise, my hip doesn’t ache after nearly slamming into the sidewalk.
I haven’t killed anyone, I swear.
But everyone else thinks otherwise. Even my defense attorney isn’t sold. Now that I’m on the defendant stand, it feels like the whole world has turned on me.
“Blake Lawrence,” Judge McGrath booms, “you are on trial for the murder of your girlfriend, Lillian Torsten. How do you plead?”
No hesitation. “Innocent, Your Honor.”
It was long ago and it was far away and it was so much better. The words echoed in Janine’s head. Over and over. And she missed him.
It had all started simply enough. Just a late night drive to escape her husband and children for an hour or so.
“Do you really think this’ll work?” It hurt to ask the words, but I had to know.
“You designed airplanes. If anyone can pull this off…” My wife Stella patted the side of the hulking drone, the result of a month’s hard work. An arm-length sewing needle rested against her shoulder, the thick steel dwarfing her long, delicate fingers.
I dart between empty skyscrapers on empty streets. My armor squeezes my chest, suffocating me. Air rushes through the three tears in my glove, stinging the bloody wounds beneath.
Footsteps pound on the pavement somewhere behind me. My pursuer is still on the warpath.
Slipping into a narrow alley, I adjust my gloves.
Jaelyn had considered slashing herself with the toothbrush shiv she’d fashioned. But if it were found on her it would be confiscated, and her venture would be over before it even started. The jagged rocks that formed the margin between the exercise yard and the camp’s caustic fog wall would have to do the job instead.
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CAL! Get me out of here!” Walden screamed into his comlink.
The whine of blasters sent him scurrying around trees and jumping branches as he bounded through the woods where he’d landed that morning. At least CAL had the foresight to scan the local channels and had seen the proclamation. How the Lothean government knew he was here remained a mystery, unless his contact had snitched on him. After all, the bounty on Terrans was enough to make any poor sod give up his own grandmother.
“Keerful with them chickens.” Jack McGuffin eyed Earl warily as he loaded up the final crate and closed the cargo hatch of the Mud Runner. “They’re priceless, you know.” He clasped my hand in his gnarled claw. “Swiped their mother from a giant back in my youth.”
I nodded politely, ignoring his senile ramblings. It’s bad business to upset a customer, especially one paying so well.
I stroke the strings of my finntler as I set it up under the burning lights of the spaceport overhead.
I reckon the best way to describe a finntler is it’s mighty like a xylophone, ‘cept with strings. That and it’s my life on a table. I’m just a boy, but most cain’t mimic the way I play. Travelers passin’ by throw coins. A few stop to listen to the music; my regulars clap along, whoopin’ and cheerin’ as I finish.
Hank wandered about the empty house, bored out of his mind, from the kitchen with a fridge full of meals, to the TV showing only reruns, to the shelf of books he’d read a dozen times, then all over again. He’d expected having his parents away for five weeks would give him a sense of ecstatic freedom.
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