Jeff blinked at the sun, wondering where his shades had gone. Dust settled around him to the tune of ringing in his ears.
The Jeep rumbled in vain. He shut off the ignition. Considering the hood was ripped open like a sardine can, it probably wasn’t going anywhere.
“So much for an easy
“Again.”
The voice that reached Pulsar along the communications thread was neither impressed nor impatient.
Pulsar pivoted away from the smoldering target at the edge of the training field to face the figure near the far-off arsenal. “But Master U’drec—I executed the maneuver perfectly! Why—”
“Return to start position, Squire.”
Pounding on the door jolts me out of the haze between sleeping and waking. Remaining alert while resting is one useful trick I still use from my army days. I rise from my chair, brush the wrinkles out of my robes, and grab my lantern. Yawning, I stumble past the carved stone tombs
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Gredna surveyed the sand and scrub ahead, tapping a claw to her muzzle. How could they get home?
Rocky mounds closed in on them from three sides. The hollow looked familiar, but no tracks marked the area.
Her brother, Hokle, crouched on all fours by a streambed, moonlight glinting off his tan scales
It’s an honor being a royal hot air balloon maker. But the conversation occurring around me makes me want to float away from my coworkers and hide.
I only have one thing in common with the other three people working in the sunshine outside Princess Amzho’s castle: a love and talent for our craft.
I’ve learned to live with pain.
A copper wilting wasp scuttles up my arm, its stinger poised to strike. I lift my eyes past my rotund master, over the carts of food I’ll never eat, and rest them on distant mountains. I focus on those peaks as the wasp delivers a paralyzing injection. Debilitating
A musket ball whizzed past Lizzie Ozark’s ear and smacked the skull of a neighboring soldier. Warm blood splattered her cheek. She chanced a look and stifled a cry.
Through the haze a hundred yards away, gray uniforms shifted, progressed, and reformed ranks. Injured comrades groaned around her feet.
Her regiment’s tattered Union
“It’s all over, Psycho-Metric! Drop the kilobomb!” I practice the command sotto voce as I scan the harbor, searching for the crimson lights of the mad mastermind’s speedboat.
Bloodbath Bridge looms above the dark water, a line of gold lamps tracing the gentle arcs of its suspension cables. Psycho-Metric has commandeered the six-lane crossing, and his goons are
Has it been long enough? The little voice in her head asked for the umpteenth time. No, one more time. Jyone used the phrase as a habitual counter, marking another revolution around the black hole. One more time around, then I’ll be far enough in the future that they will have forgotten me.
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For Zadie, the first ninety-nine steps under the oppressive canopy of nighttime Pennsylvania woods were hard enough. The air was still and stagnant, and only thin shafts of moonlight pierced the darkness. But at the hundredth step, Zadie hesitated and took a deep breath. She had reached the point where she would have
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One of us will die today, and it’s sure as hell not gonna be me.
I’m a billion miles from home, crouched under a pile of ice boulders. Methane rain pours from Titan’s dark orange clouds.
The LCD screen on my forearm pulses red.
THERMAL COIL DAMAGED
REGULATED TEMPERATURE REMAINING: 00:13:24
The lisuxx were on the move, rising like a lake of miniature stars over the dark prairie. I crouched at the edge of the forest, watching with a familiar sense of awe tightening my chest. They were a blinding, bright yellow. The color of poison. Forbidden to the tribe. Millions of
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