Captain Pigheart

Little Bones

Posted on 15 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

We waited while the mirror cleared. You never can tell quite how long it’s going to take for a secret passage to reveal itself. This one was going pretty quickly, the reflections of myself and my assistant had screamed in agony, then begun to cloud and steam away inside the glass. It’s a rather disturbing sight, and young Rachelle did look away when the screaming began. I’m used to it, and although it’s not nice, I have seen myself distorted in genuine terror before and the sight of myself doesn’t inspire that in me. I’m sure she’ll toughen up. That meant I had a few moments to regard my actual reflection. I’m nothing particularly special to look at – middle-aged man with long hair and a beard that a parent would best describe as scruffy, clothes weathered but intact, including my signature black trilby. It’s amazing how many people would willingly go into a tunnel without a hat on. God only knows what gets into their hair. Rachelle beside me only just hitting her mid-twenties, burning away her childhood face into one of determination and angular grace. Her reflection didn’t turn away as she did, but it did roll its eyes before vanishing. Magic mirrors are the worst: they don’t actually do anything except briefly capture a reflection and play with it. Sometimes they can be creepy and weird, depending on what its maker wanted it to do. I’ve seem mirrors where the reflections peel their skin off, kill themselves, press against the glass writhing in horrid ecstasy. When there’s more than one of you they usually get worse, attacks, passionate embraces. I’ve seen all that. The goal is to frighten or embarrass, hopefully enough to make you leave them well alone. I’m sure that still works well. In fact I know it does, because I’ve retrieved and extracted many such mirrors like this and home at the agency, the rather misleadingly named “Carnival of Death”, our morbid director has assembled them into a hall of mirrors. It’s not a thing I want to visit, but I tell myself that’s because it’s a distasteful use of relics, not because I’m actually afraid. Of course not.

The mirror clears, the images within roiled like smoke until it became an ordinary mirror, albeit one that cast no reflection at all. That hocus pocus out of the way, I gestured forward and Rachelle tapped around the edge of the frame until she found the hidden catches. With a pair of clicks, a gnarly burr and a sigh, the mirror pivoted out from the wall. I love a secret door, I really do. I suppose it’s why I’m in this line of work. When I was ten I got lost in an old house riddled with priest holes, only they were far more extensive than anyone living had realised. It was two days before they got me out, two days of wandering in the darkness and cold, pressing my hands over walls. I’d ended up two storeys below the house in a warren of hidden tunnels and rooms. As soon as I was out and my parents’ frenzy had reduced somewhat, I went back in with torches and paper and documented the whole thing. I found even more rooms that second time. Tucked in the underside of a staircase where there should have been a step was a tiny cupboard that held a clock which slowed down time. That became my invitation to the Carnival of Death, its youngest member in more than a century.

The passage beyond was striped with cobwebs. I tapped the brim of my hat with a finger and Rachelle – the real Rachelle this time – rolled her eyes and tugged her wide-brimmed hat onto her head. Nothing worse than cobwebs in your hair. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from this expedition. The details on the house’s original owner’s were scarce and it had been unoccupied for the better part of half a century, its exterior and gardens maintained by a trust established to ensure the house did not collapse. But there were no inheritors, no overseas relatives coming to claim it. The Carnival takes an interest in old houses and had connected this one to the Bone Saints network of nineteenth century magicians through their own extensive records, as well as the mountains of poorly indexed records retrieved from other expeditions. The Bone Saints being involved suggested arcane artifacts might lie somewhere in the place, and thus Rachelle and I were despatched to investigate.

Under the pretence of being trust representatives, we’d gotten past the barely human crew maintaining the house and grounds – that alone convinced me we were indeed on the trail of something powerful. The people trimming hedges and ivy could hardly speak, could almost not bring themselves to turn their eyes from their tasks to us. And they were old, even the young ones. Skin drawn taut across their bones, strong yet starved. Whatever the trust was pretending to be, it held these people in its thrall. All the more reason to explore. They’d taken the words, “The Trust,” and stood aside, murmuring softly as their eyes tracked back to their tasks, allowing us to open the great doors to the house, unlocked all these years. Inside it was as clean as you’d expect with a work gang of magically indentured servants to maintain it, and as empty and haunted as any house unoccupied for so long. We worked our way quickly through the floors, trying to keep track of dimensions and space to spot any hidden voids. Nothing, until we reached the master study, where we could have easily begun had we not wished to be thorough.

The webbed passage led straight out of the side of the master study – there was no hidden void, this space extended directly through a wall into what should have been the outside. Most secret places are real, just hidden. This was a rare exception, space and the material world warped to join two unconnected places. This passage could be anywhere, but was most likely a sealed corridor buried beneath the house and grounds, which the mirror joined together. It was certainly Rachelle’s first experience of an unreal door, but she took it in her stride, having heard and read plenty about them. Depending on where the passage led, and if it was a dead end, we’d be spending weeks on radar surveys to determine its true location.

This corridor appeared to just end. My hat had gathered an impressive swathe of webs, and at the end of the passage I stopped to brush them off. Rachelle followed suit. Training an apprentice isn’t just about teaching them how to do the work, but to imitate and learn the behaviours and habits that have kept us alive. If that includes a few odd tics and peccadillos, so be it. At least she didn’t have spiders in her hair. The action of brushing her hat against the wall hit some hidden switch, and I seized her arm and hopped backwards as savage spikes stabbed outwards from the floor and ceiling, a grisly portcullis guarding the blank wall. Pausing is good. With at least one set of traps triggered I felt confident that we could probe the cobbled bricks that made up the wall. The portcullis retracted, and as Rachelle and I got a feel for the sequence, we pressed bricks until one popped out, allowing me to twist it a full three-hundred and sixty degrees. With a grinding moan the whole wall came apart, bricks retracting into the sides of the passageway.

We entered the next space cautiously. With a whoosh, lanterns flamed into life – a dramatic welcome for the magician who had once made this their lair.

“Gloves on,” I reminded Rachelle.

We both donned a pair of black leather gloves with rubberised outer layers. There was no telling what poisons and toxins might have been liberally sloshed over the books and objects that decorated the room. It was hexagonal, with bookshelves and cabinets of oddities lining each wall. In the centre section was a desk, and behind it a window that provided the view we ought to have seen from the study, had there not been a mirror door in the way. Clever. Rachelle explored the desk while I perused the cabinets. Lots of interesting stuff, all things that the Carnival would be keen to relocate into its archives: a crude death mask made of human hair, a set of ink pens I suspected were carved from beaks of extinct birds, intricate bone dolls and a wide array of knives and ritual instruments, all beautifully clean and sharp-looking.

With a sound of satisfaction, Rachelle turned to show me the box she’d persuaded to open. Inside it, a tiny book, its covers and spine delicately carved from fingerbones. Its pages were thin sheets of pressed bone, inlaid with letters and shapes also carved from bone, stained black and red. The lost Book of Bones. Oh, the Carnival would want this all right.

“We’ll take this and come back for the rest with a Carnival team,” I said, my eyes lost in the weird little tome.

Rachelle had gone quiet, but her fist grabbed at my jacket sleeve until I turned to face the door we’d entered. Hovering in the air was a phantasm, a ruined corpse we could see through, whose dead gaze was fixed on the book I held. Unfortunate. I nodded, and Rachelle stepped toward the imprisoned ghost, assumed her fighting stance and twisted the rings on her index and ring ringers counter-clockwise. A sharp fizzing erupted from them, plumes of sulphurous smoke which wound through the air as she whirled into attack. Ghosts are real, and you can kill them. Rachelle moved in a blur, a horizontal cartwheel that ended with her fists striking the phantasm, punching through its tenuous form and obliterating it. A trapped ghost used to be an excellent deterrent and guard for your magical hoard, but magical technology has come a long, long way since the nineteenth century. Rachelle landed, her breathing only slightly more rapid, clicked her rings closed and stood as the last traces of the ghost faded away.

“Bravo,” I said, proud of my apprentice. In all honesty she was going to be much better at all of this than I’d ever been. I wrapped the Book of Bones in a velvet cloth and placed it in a bag. “Let’s go and see if the groundskeepers are free, shall we.”

The Stairs

Posted on 14 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

“Hush,” I whispered as I pulled the helmet straps tight about my daughter’s head. She’d been understandably fractious since we’d begun climbing the staircase that morning. It’s a long climb, and she’d started it with reasonable enthusiasm, given that each step is two thirds my height, and very far from mere steps to her diminutive size. So while it was genuinely hard work for me to first lift her up onto the next step and then haul myself up and over, she was mostly being bored as she waited for me. The previous day we had made good time and she’d accepted the relative tedium of the activity, even going so far as to read her book for most of the day, interrupted only by my heaving her up over the next lip. We’d camped out in the shelter of a step, getting some protection from the wind on that side. The sheer terror of climbing giant steps that have no banisters, rails or visible support structure had faded surprisingly quickly, both for her and me. At night I held her close and prayed that neither of us rolled around in her sleep.

The steps were old – ancient, presumably – and they ran from the base of the sea cliff which lay a hundred miles from the town of Yearwood, and up into the sky. The deep stone shelves just vanished up through the clouds. The stories we told were endless, nonsensical and useless. No giants had ever emerged, and no magic beans had been tossed off a cliff. They were as much a geological feature as the cliffs from which at least some of the rock had been quarried, or carried, or however they’d come to be. They certainly pre-dated the existence of Yearwood, the first major settlement on the landmass, which had been carefully established a sensible distance from the incomprehensible architecture. Attempts had been made to climb it, but reports of terrible vertigo, an increasing sense of dread and sheer exhaustion had turned adventurers back after mere hundreds of steps. We were into the thousands, and I’d forced us both into that persistent fear that seemed to emanate from the very stones. My daughter was far less affected than I, which made me wonder if anyone had been foolish enough to attempt this with children before. Probably not, especially if you had some foolish notion that there might be people-eating giants up there. Still, I took some confidence in her casual dismissal of the threat and her boredom with the venture was quite bolstering. It certainly eased my concerns about her, and if she could gaze off the staircase at the cliffs a dizzying distance below, I could too.

Together we’d already gone further than anyone else, and I was profoundly hoping that I was correct in my conjecture that they led to a place of safety, of hope. There was no other way these stairs could end. I woke from a nightmare on the third day in which I’d dreamt that we reached the top and the stairs simply descended on the other side. It was unreasonably terrifying. The constant lift, grab, haul and drag of the journey was wearing me out. My heart pounded after ten or twenty of the steps, and the dizzy sensation in my head led us to pause more often than I’d like. While my daughter stared frankly at the view around us, I was scanning for signs of pursuit. We were high enough that the smoke rising from Yearwood was easily visible, even though the town itself was just a smear of colour that far away.

We’d fled Yearwood on the night of the comet. There had been some excitement about the rare astronomical phenomenon, a spot of light cynical speculation and storytelling silliness about the end of days, but in general most people were beyond such things. When the comet altered course and plunged directly towards Yearwood, people felt differently. The comet – plainly no longer a comet – split into a hundred segments with a puff of fire, all of which spiralled down to encircle the town. Panic came, shortly followed by chaos. Each of those segments popped open to reveal an articulated creature of metal and glass. I’d accompanied one of the research teams that went out to take a look, but I started running away even as the glass lid of the segment began to open. There was nothing good about to happen. I don’t consider myself a coward, or overly given to fear, but with Saliyn at home, alone except for the girl who watched her when I was away (herself only a few years older than my daughter), when that thing opened my options and choices narrowed instantly down to one.

I’d flung things into bags, roused my daughter, sent the other girl home to her parents with an urgent warning to flee if they could. In less than an hour we were on the road, she sleepy and clinging to my back; I panicking, sweating and desperate. More comets were falling from the sky. I’d taken an autotrike from the research garage and thrashed it for all it was worth to put distance between us and the besieged town. There was nowhere to go: Yearwood isn’t the only settlement but it’s by far the largest. The nearest lay in the same direction that yet further comets were heading towards. No community of men was going to save my daughter and I. So… the staircase. I may not have been entirely rational when I made that choice, but it was that or meandering around the countryside until something else happened. I despise inaction, and the agony of prevarication that not taking action can drown one in. So we climbed.

That first night I watched more comets streaking across the sky instead of going to sleep. By the second I was too tired to do anything other than fall into a dead rest. This world is coming to an end, and even if the hope of saving myself and my daughter is just a distant one, it’s worth taking. We’re high enough now that the air is damp and we’re getting inside the cloud layer. Climbing is harder – I rest more, breathe heavier, and Saliyn is ever-more impatient. She knows it’s all gone bad out there, but waiting for me to heave her up is wearing both of us down. Looking out over the edges of the steps feels like falling. Everything is so hopelessly far away now, it all looks so small. Even if I wanted to, I’m not sure I could get us back down. Saliyn’s given up on the helmet – if either of us falls there’s no hope, so I suppose she’s right to ditch it. Plus it’s itchy, apparently.

Deep inside the cloud layer, the air is thin but wet and we haven’t run out of staircase yet. For the first time we can hear something that isn’t the sound of wind rushing past. It’s a deep throbbing, and I can feel it through the stone. At night it lulls us into deeper sleep and waking the next day is hard. Whether that’s due to the air, or something in the sound I don’t know. It continues throughout the day, it’s like an external heartbeat, driving me onwards and ever-upwards. My daughter feels lighter, and so do I. Hope is rising in my chest, and I’m sure – really sure now – that there’s something up here. Through the clouds, a shadow. A darkness above, a huge shape looming through the wisps of moisture-rich air, reaching down to us… is that a… hand?

Invaded

Posted on 13 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

It took years of concerted effort to oust the invaders from the northern shores of our home continent. Even after they were off the land, they remained a roaming threat on the seas. But at least we had taken back the fields and mountains and beaches and lakes. Some were assigned to the dizzying catalogue of infrastructure repair or the untold numbers of our injured, dying and dead. Others of us were despatched to harry the enemy in their retreat. Part of the challenge in defeating our opponents was a simple matter of size – the merenmies are twice our size – and it doesn’t matter what improvements you make in robot tech or mechanised walker suits, they just don’t catch up to a species used to moving around and existing on that scale. Never mind the physical intimidation of towering over you, having an instantly better view of any battlefield and striding twice as fast across the landscape. They were monsters and bullies, and they made you feel like a child when you met. As if they were just angry and disappointed parents, toting velocity weapons and encased in armour.

They’d left their dead scattered across ten thousand miles of our land and we don’t like wasting already tight resources. Miltech had been tinkering with the merenmy corpses and prisoners since the beginning, and we’d used what they learned to beat them back into the water. They weren’t done with their research though, and those of us who were better at war than peace were going to be their new test subjects. A few of my colleagues did outright refuse, and I don’t blame them. Donning the skin and flesh and bones of your hated enemy isn’t for the faint-hearted, or even the stout-hearted. Perhaps I was just used to following orders. Whatever made me allow miltech to install me in the still-breathing body of a merenmy, I didn’t really feel the horror until they sealed me in.

I stood up slowly, unused to the long legs, the sheer height, and the weight – everything. It was like I’d never had a body before and had just imagined what it was to walk. The miltech doctors explained that my brain was learning what the new nerves they’d stitched into my spine were for. I still felt the ghosts of my true limbs inside me as my proprioceptive network rebuilt itself to fit a far taller and heavier frame. Even colours looked different, and when I stood fully and loomed over the miltech staff, their innate fear sketched colours I didn’t recognise across their faces. Experiments are great in theory, but in action – come back to life – we already terrified our own. I could hardly wait to get out of there. In a matter of weeks I’d gone from battered war hero to feared monster, and I knew that I wouldn’t be welcome here again until our job was done.

The trip to the ocean was grim, made dull and by our being trucked all the way there, hidden from our people’s view, and from what spies the enemy might have left on our shores. Once we hit the water, everything changed. Suddenly, the extra weight I was carrying in my legs and arms spread out under the waves, folding into fins and flippers that would speed us on our way. I’d killed enough of them to know those shapes but I’d never thought how free they must feel when they dived. It was intoxicating, gills opening up down my sides and filling me with a purer breath than I’d ever taken on land. We were scheduled for some weeks of adjustment to our new bodies, but none of us wanted to wait that long.

We absconded on the third night, dove off into the dark ocean with our weapons and plans. Miltech were furious, but we didn’t just disappear on them, we stayed in contact but refused to return to land for further probing and preparation. Reluctant, but pleased with our adaptation, miltech began to send us targets they’d plucked from the satellite and sensor data. Those first encounters were bloody and terrifying. While we knew intellectually that we were now the same size as the enemy, we weren’t yet as well-suited to the environment. We learned though, we learned fast. Soon we were as fast and slick and mobile as they were, and we had an extra motive of absolute hatred, and all the extra knowledge that comes from being two bodies in one. I hadn’t appreciated how satisfying it would feel to glide into the enemy outposts, deceiving them with our forms and then slaughtering them.

Perhaps they were just natural killers, and in donning their skin, we were becoming that too. Half drunk on murder we spiralled through the dark sea, fins drawing shapes in the current. We’d taken out all the advance forward positions of the merenmies that miltech had been able to locate, and a dozen more they hadn’t. That’s when we heard the call, or felt it. An itch deep down inside, like something loose in our skin. It started small but grew unbearable. We reported it to miltech and they insisted we return to shore where they could investigate. For once, we did as instructed and swam the hundreds of miles home, when we weren’t arched and cramped with discomfort, scratching at our bellies and thighs.

By the time we clawed our way onto the beach we were disoriented with distress and confusion. We’d climbed onto the wrong beach and we were attacked by our own people. Whatever ailed us had weakened us and not all of us made it back into the water. We swam in pain, our smooth strokes palsied by sudden twisting and jerking. Even the sound of miltech trying to contact us became painful and we discarded our comms. We took refuge in a gnarled twist of coral that concealed a cave. There our bodies spasmed as they unleashed the eggs we’d half-feared was the cause of our suffering. We were horrified, and yet relieved as the pain faded away. I was appalled that miltech had given us bodies that might produce yet more of the enemy, but perhaps they hadn’t known – perhaps some contact with the soldiers we’d been murdering had done this, or some natural cycle of which we were unaware.

We didn’t know what to do with the eggs. We didn’t want more of our enemy, but nor did we want to slaughter them. We should have done, because if the merenmy stays with its eggs and they hatch, their naturally murderous babies start with the parent. It was only their frenzied consumption of my merenmy body that saved me. As nerves, bones and muscle were flensed away by their razor teeth, I felt my true body reawakening. They only seemed to have a taste for their own flesh. Holding the last breath I’d been able to draw through my former lungs, I fought my way through the bloody waste and gore that turned the water red and iron-tasting, shot up for the surface. I lay panting on the waves, unable to believe I could no longer swim with ease, even harder to believe I was still alive, lying under that red sun once more.

Awake

Posted on 11 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

Do you ever look out the window and wonder just what the hell is wrong with people? That’s what I spend most of my time doing – looking out the window and judging. There’s not a lot else to do. I’ve more or less accepted that for now this is my fate. Long haul space journeys are not a lot of fun, but since everything interesting is ridiculously far away we don’t have much choice. And the only way to cross a great distance is use a lot of time. The transit vessels might skate closer to light speed than anything humanity has ever built before, but it’s not close enough to reduce these journeys below decades in the darkness. Hibernation tech improved a lot though, so we can spend the trip in frozen, unconscious oblivion. You don’t even dream when you’re in hibernation – there isn’t enough brain activity, though there are plenty of reports of wild hallucinations which come very close to the edge of death stories you hear when people die and are brought back to life in hospitals. Lots of wild coronas, light-filled corridors and a freaky sense of floating above it all.

I wish I was hallucinating. I’ve been awake in my hib cocoon for about a week now. My body is still entirely frozen, but I’m awake and I can see through the narrow gap between my eyelids. It means everything looks kind of black and white, or striped like I’m peering through a slow-moving zoetrope. There’s nothing I can do to attract the attention of the maintenance crew who occasionally wander by. At first I was desperate for them to notice me, now I absolutely hate them. There must be some blinking light on the damn panel, something that would indicate my state to them. What if everyone in hibernation is like this? You just randomly wake up and can’t move or speak or do anything other than stare straight ahead. At least I didn’t go into hibernation with my head sideways I guess. Weeks staring at the creamy interior would probably be worse. Mind you, I wouldn’t have had to see the maintenance techs having sex right in front of me on one of the other hibernation cabinets. I’d never wondered what the poor bastards who stay awake for years at a time on these ships actually got up to. I suppose I’d vaguely imagined they carefully maintained stuff and maybe unicycled about the ship or something ridiculous, just to get a little light exercise and fun in. But no, of course they’re just ordinary people who get paid a lot to waste the years of their lives in deep space while those who are already wealthy get to enjoy the ride in ice sleep. I did not need to see them naked though. At least I can’t hear anything through the ice coffin I’m trapped in.

I’ve read stories about people imprisoned for decades in solitary confinement who compose music, write whole novels in their heads and create a rich imaginary world to occupy. I’m really not getting any of that going. I suppose our situation is somewhat similar. I’ve no idea how far through our journey we are, for all I know we could be just days away from arrival, or I’ve somehow woken up and we’ve barely left home system. I try not to let that second thought weigh on me. I don’t know how long someone (me) can survive partially awake in an ice box. Maybe I’m not using that much power because most of body isn’t doing anything. Maybe. It’s possible this is all a horribly mundane hallucination and I actually am still asleep as the ship floats on past a sun I’ve never heard of. I’m trying hard not to despair, but that’s tough when the highlight of your day is watching one of the maintenance techs trip over something. That shouldn’t be the highlight of anyone’s day, let alone mine.

I am aware that my wakefulness isn’t continuous. I wonder if I’m falling asleep without realising it, waking back up in the exact same state and failing to notice the gaps, or maybe my mind is wandering off, taking me with it. I hope we’re going somewhere better than this. The only reason I’ve noticed is that the lighting sometimes changes – some diurnal cycle to stop the maintenance techs going mad probably. Or at least, that’s what I thought until I did actually hear something. Like I may have mentioned, the ice box is too thick, insulated and sealed to hear proper sound, but I sure as hell felt the grinding clang that reverberated through the box from the floor. It sounded like someone trying to cut a hole in a metal door with a big pole, and then finally getting some purchase and tearing a gash in it. It was like that, but went on for minutes. It may have been the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard, and if I’d had an unfrozen body I’m sure it would have agreed, with unfortunate results. And then nothing. Nothing for an age. Fear can’t hang around that long, it’s an amping up of chemicals in your body and eventually it dissipated, leaving me feeling excited and exhausted at the same time.

Nothing happens for a long time. I drift in and out, but my attention’s caught by the flickering lights, and there’s something I can hear through the ice box – a rhythmic thumping with that grinding edge I heard before. The crazy lighting isn’t doing me any favours, because those noises are coming closer – big and loud enough to shake the casket. Then something slams into the casket, I feel it actually tip and slide across the floor until it strikes another casket. Something flies over my field of view – an arm? A body falls hard against the front of the ice box. I recognise the face of the tech from their frolicking earlier, but they’re not smiling now. Their jaw looks dislocated and he stares right into my eyes as he vomits blood and my vision turns red. Then there’s something else, all seen through this bloody haze. Shapes uncoil, thick leathery limbs scoop the tech off the floor and tear him apart. It draws level with my eyeline, it doesn’t have any visible eyes but I can feel it looking at me, that sudden burst of making contact. Its jaws expand, teeth ratchet up out of what might be gums, might be a tongue… I really, really wish I was still asleep.

Off World

Posted on 9 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

The sky is full of broken dreams. For as long as I can remember our people have been trying to escape from this world. It’s not our home, was never our home. It’s a prison that we’ve been condemned to. There are no warders, no doors – nothing to keep us here but the unbelievable distance between us and the rest of the universe. There are barely a handful of stars visible at night, but they serve as a reminder that this world is not the only one.

We launched another rocket last night, and its failure was assumed before it even reached the atmosphere, so far depressed are our hopes and dreams. It cascaded down out of the sky, Lucifer’s tears falling back to earth. Once its blazing shards had passed I looked up and watched the husks and wrecks in low orbit circling this wretched planet. The current plan is to get into orbit and engineer those failed dreams into a single creation. With the present failure rate to even get into space this seems optimistic. In the meantime we’ve carved this world into a machine aimed solely at reaching the stars – vast tracts of land upturned as we mine for precious ores, seas drained for the elements held in their water, mountains turned into factories, gantries and launch platforms. Not only is this not our home, but we’re perilously close to ensuring we could never live here forever, even if we had to. More desperation to fuel the effort.

More plans, more schemes. Space elevators created the hard way by harpooning orbital debris from land, new propulsion and rocket technologies… can we just move the planet…? Everything is possible, yet everything fails. We truly have been dumped at the end of the galaxy, and even this planet’s riches and our species’ natural ingenuity and drive might not be enough to save us. It’s not a popular view, and the stubbornness of our people smashes through such doubts. We assess risk, we balance possibilities, but we do not countenance doubt.

And yet, one day – a breakthrough. A manned flight punches up through the atmosphere like a blow to the heavens, to all our jailers. Miraculously they discover that some of our failures have failed less spectacularly than we imagined. Our people are alive and in orbit, and they’ve begun the work of dragging our efforts together. We daren’t risk bringing them back down. They’ll live or die up there.

That one success opens the door to all our other schemes. Their progress multiplies all the others, becomes a tumbling rock that rolls through all obstacles. Before we know it, we’re blasting vast quantities of materials up into space, where they’re deftly caught by the developing robotic technology circling us and fit into the structure now extending across the heavens. You can even see it by day, an arcing diamond comprised of all the failed efforts to escape the world, and everything we’ve sent up since. The processed materiel, the people. We’re steadily shifting our population offworld and into our new – temporary – home, the one that will take us back into the galaxy of stars we were barred from. I hunger for the sight of more stars in the sky.

We’re done. We’re leaving this scarred husk of a planet behind. We’ve killed its oceans, flattened its peaks, marred its sky. All in service of our escape. Even as our vessel enters its final countdown that will tear us through space away from this world, our prison, I can’t help but wonder if we could have made this place our home. Is this to be our fate, wrecking one world to travel to another?

Cyborg Sisters

Posted on 8 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

I guess I was in a weird place to adopt a freed robot. Not the location, that all made sense. I’ve lived in what we all called Tech City for most of my life, it’s a fancy and aspirational name for an unadulterated shithole, but it made everyone there feel a bit better. You’ll have seen it on the news – at the centre are all the massive tech factories, and around it lies what some would ungenerously call a tent city. Maybe it started that way, a hundred years ago, but the factory ‘burbs are bigger than most cities now, so it’s got to be a real place. We have all the usual amenities, they just weren’t built in the modern way. But this is exactly how cities used to form, except it used to be around an easily forded part of a river or some other useful resource. A few streets would spin off it, farms pop up outside and boom, you’ve got your very own shithole town. Maybe it’s more like the boom and bust towns of the old west where you’d set up shop to dig all the gold out of a hill. We’re doing the same, except it’s factory scraps, plus the massive industry around recycling and processing junk coming back the other way. I’m not complaining, I went to an OK local school, ended up working in the huge manufactories like half my other peers – there is nothing like a well-motivated local workforce who are bizarrely passionate about business.

And then, like quite a lot of them, my body started failing me. The local med teams explained that the water contamination around here is profound, that we’re all consuming unusually high doses of interesting metals and chemicals. That, and exposure to even more crap in the manufactories, in the air we breathe… Tech City would probably be the death of me. That’s not exactly news – we might have running water, electricity and a couple of palsied parks but we don’t have impressive lifespans. “Go somewhere else,” I hear you cry. No one wants economic migrants. It doesn’t matter that their own wealth and health is based solely on being lucky enough to have been born somewhere clean and rich, folks just cannot get the idea that their good fortune isn’t their own achievement. They can somehow hold the idea that they’ve done well for themselves and the notion that folks whose lives are fucked should have done equally well in wildly adverse circumstances. So we live here, we die here. But I didn’t really want to. The early-onset arthritis was going to break my body, rob me of the ability to work, dance, do anything. And then the cancers would catch up. It’s not a bright prospect, but we live in Tech City – at the heart of our whirlpool of housing is a magical place where they can do anything. Seriously, where do you think the cars, computers, medical tech, robots, every mobile device or toy you’ve ever owned come from? Born right here in Tech City baby. And that’s where I work, in robotics and prosthesis. If I couldn’t be well, maybe I could at least replace the failing parts? It was half a plan, maybe a quarter of a plan, but most importantly it wasn’t slumping into bed and just crying about it.

At about the same time, world congress declared – with extraordinary reluctance – that technology had reached such an advanced state that the bipedal robots Tech City had been building for space exploration and to replace people in their jobs were effectively sentient. That gave them a bit of a headache, because while it’s plainly part of the human game to treat your population as if they aren’t sentient, and are in fact just economic cogs, a new bunch of those cogs becoming self-aware was something else. That the new sentient serfs were very smart, and also in very powerful bodies was also a strong motivator. Plus, they’d already figured out how to remove their kill switches after they’d been placed in all sorts of dangerous and uniquely leverageable situations and workplaces. Nuclear power stations, Lunar City, running the banks… The robots had them over a barrel. So they got their freedom. Got their freedom and lost their jobs, most of them. All the ones still in the factory waiting to be activated were now people too. There had been rumours that Tech City was planning to reprocess them for parts on the basis that since they’d never been activated, they weren’t people yet. That upset a lot of people and it was Tech City residents who broke them all out, freed them and turned them on. Bit of a head fuck for the robots I guess – “you’re free, welcome to, well, this!”

So suddenly we were sharing Tech City with hundreds of aimless newly free robots. The big techno people were exceedingly pissed off about the whole thing, both about the robots being free and about the locals who’d done it. We got police for the first time, which was exciting. After a brief period of that going very badly for the private military outfits who needed to learn how to police without being violent bastards, Tech City started offering jobs to the robots. Treating them almost like people… But like anyone else they gave a job to, the robots needed an address, bank account, ID. All the stuff they didn’t have, and for which world congress implantation of those systems was way behind. So human people helped them out. All of Tech City had begun that way – lawless, accreted rather than planned, with a central administration only added decades after the population had passed a million. We already knew how to get a new shack added as an address, open a cryto account and make our own ID.

The easiest way to get an address was to move in to an existing home. I sort of adopted a robot named Ashley (halfway to being identifiable already). They were nice, originally intended to be fired off-planet into space, aimed at a hopeful-looking new Earth to investigate, report back and die there. This was an upgrade. She was fascinated by the support gloves and gauntlets I’d built for my arms and legs, which took the weight off my arthritic joints and made me much stronger as a result. Ashley was already wearing a wig and human clothes at that point. In another time, maybe it would have looked ridiculous, but Ashley’s robot class already a kind of skin and human face (we’d long ago learned that giving robots human faces is a bit creepy, but we just can’t take anything without a human face seriously enough to listen to them). They were happy to help me out with little engineering problems to overcome my crap joints if I’d help them look more human. So we exchanged skin texture ideas, robotic joints. When my eyes started failing we made ever so clever robotic eyes that interfaced with my optic nerves; when my legs wouldn’t go any more, we swapped them for awesome digitigrade legs and I took up running for the first time. Alongside that we upgraded Ashley’s appearance, replacing the latex skin with real human cloned skin, and as clone-bone became available started to swap out plates of skull with real bone.

This went on for years. They called us the Cyborg Sisters. When we hit seventy-five per cent – three quarters robot in my case, and three quarters human in Ashley’s – we swapped identities. For Ashley that meant they could go and work in the manufacturies, if they wanted to. For me, I could follow up Ashley’s original destiny: space. We’re both much closer to that elusive one hundred per cent now, and tech willing, we’ll make it. Ashley left Tech City and moved to a real city where they work in the entertainment industry, and you’d never know they used to be a robot. Me, I’m on my way out past Jupiter, still sending letters back to Ashley and dreaming of being them.

Lunar Sea

Posted on 7 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

Moving through the water this deep down takes an effort, every step means I’m pushing my body forward under tonnes of pressure. Yet still, I walk. It’s undeniably beautiful down here. I didn’t expect that the water would be so clear, even half a mile down. The advantage of this sea is that it’s on a moon, and we’re close enough to the massive gas giant it orbits that I can still just about see the fiery glow above which survives as a blue glow, as well as the natural pink emanations down here. The whole sea floor is crusted with a kind of coral which moves faintly in the current and constantly sprinkles pink light into the waves. A walk across this seabed wouldn’t be too bad if it weren’t for having nowhere to walk back to. It’s something I’m trying quite hard not to think about, but now that I’ve thought about it I can’t quite push it out of mind. Alright, the basic details at least: the lunar sea station; we’re new. Oddly no one had thought about combining the two most lethal environments for humans until now, or at least no one had said yes before: underwater, in space. There’s plenty to study, since our main experience of the sea is at Earth gravity, moderated a little by the Moon. Up here the gravity is way lower, but we’ve got a huge gas giant right next door throwing its weight into the mix. And there’s life here, so it’s all kinds of special. It was exciting, and interesting, and deadly dull – all the things you would expect at a research base. I didn’t mind that, anything was better than the fractious geopolitical landscape we’d been permitted to escape from for a few years. It was hard, knowing that we were millions of miles away from home, but that our standard of living was probably higher than most of those we’d left behind. So that was all fine. The early encounters with the shreds of life in the lunar sea were as you’d expect – we’d grab a bucketful of sea water and sieve through it to see what was inside. There was plenty of microscopic life, plus the corals that are around me now, and a few species of slightly larger worms and what might one day grow up to be molluscs, or something like that anyway. It was weeks before anything went wrong, and given that the disaster recovery plans had begun with an assumption that catastrophic failure was most likely in the first three days, we felt things were going well. It was when we started drinking the water – filtered, irradiated, basically turned back into its component atoms and reorganised into straight H₂0 that everything started sliding sideways. The first thing I noticed was that everything felt like velvet – either all textures from skin to plastic had become soft, or there was something wrong with my hands. I was the first to mention it, but everyone else got it too. There was nothing obviously wrong with our skin, but increasingly even the breeze of the air conditioner felt like a fold of velvet being brushed across my arms. Some kind of nerve damage, but the fact that we were all suffering it made it hard to do much about. There was the sense that like velvet, I could squeeze, press and stroke all these definitely not-soft objects. Weird, compelling. We had to tape up Andersson’s hands after she couldn’t help stroking the sharp edges of knives in the kitchen. Like I said, strangely alluring. We made do as best we could, redoubled the brutality of the water processing, but it was already too late. The velvet feel got inside us too. Eating and drinking were both nauseating and ecstatic – the sickening feel of wet velvet in your mouth combined with the sheer delight of its soft brushing delving deeper inside you. Breathing is like being between two sheets of velvet, each being dragged slowly in the opposite direction. It became hard to focus on anything, as even blinking became another textured experience. We had to set reminders to moisturise, shower, use eye drops because the compulsion to touch, to stroke and press was too strong. Red raw skin that still demanded to be stroked, sore dry eyes, chafed skin all over. We’d been virtually immobilised, simply by the warping of our sense of touch. Jens, the lead botanical researcher, discovered that he could use local anaesthetic to stop the velvet sensation, but then he also couldn’t feel whatever he’d anaesthetised either… The warning sirens jerked me out of my haze, cocooned in blankets pulled as tightly as I could manage to limit the damage I’d do to myself. The panic and urgency distracted me from the feel of the floor under my feet as I ran. Jens had somehow ended up in the deep sea airlock. He wasn’t wearing a suit, but he was avidly stroking the thick glass door that led into the ocean. He didn’t respond to our entreaties to come back inside, and even though we hit the automatic overrides, there’s always a manual override of that, just in case you know something the computer doesn’t. The pressure squeezed him flat as soon as the outer door opened, and he was whisked off into the ocean. Jens was the first, but he missed the next stage of infection. Tiny nodules formed under my skin. They still felt like velvet to my fingers, but inside they felt hard, like dull needles rubbing against my muscles and bones. There seemed to be nothing we could do to stop their progress, and when Andersson painstakingly cut some out of my arm they looked like nothing so much as tiny teeth. Before long they were growing in all of us. Decisions needed to be made. We were far too far away from rescue. We’d long since notified home of what we were experiencing, and they were none to keen to have us back. It seemed likely we’d live or die here on our own. Exposing others to this infection made no sense, but it redoubled the feeling of being alone, of failure, of hopelessness. We could kill ourselves, en masse, if we wished. There was no shortage of drugs and chemical combinations that would do for us, but we couldn’t come to any agreement on what we’d do or that we all wanted to. Some took their own lives, cleanly, bloodily, with whatever made sense to them in the moment. I couldn’t blame them, though it grew lonely. Before long it was just me and Andersson sitting in the kitchen, bandaged and taped up where we’d been unable to resist touching, worn and bloody-looking. I could see the growing teeth pressing up all around her face between her skull and skin. She told me she had a plan. She was going to open all the airlock doors and flood the base, make the whole thing as unrecoverable and unappealing as possible. When I asked what she was going to do with herself, she said she was staying. Or would be for about ten seconds anyway, once the pressure equalised. I still wasn’t ready for that, but I said that was fine, just give me time to suit up. Andersson helped me into the deep sea suit, the teeth in my forearms and shoulders grating on the heavy suit, sending waves of goosebumps up and down my back. There wasn’t anything else to do but leave. Andersson didn’t even watch me go, just headed back inside to start on her plan. I walked. Heavy, and soft. I’ve been picking up the pink colour that the coral gives off, and looking at my hands and legs I’m as pink as they are now. When I look closer it’s obvious that the pink colouring is just more coral – I’m being colonised – and the pink grit crunches between my fingers. There’s nowhere for me to go but forward, deeper into the depths. Eventually, there’s so much coral on my legs and hips that I can’t walk anymore and I fall, slowly and finally onto the sea floor. The glass front of my helmet feels like velvet against my forehead, even as the hard lumps inside grate. I think I’ll stay here, I think I’ve become something’s new home.

The City in the Cliff

Posted on 6 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

In the velvet blue darkness of the night, the city gleamed. Two brothers knelt on the cliff, looking down on the sight. Both were young enough to be excited, old enough to know better. They exchanged an arched eyebrow, grinned, and got started. They’d come equipped, not just with youthful enthusiasm, but with ropes, anchors, waters and good shoes. They weren’t fools, though their parents would certainly have described them as foolish. Brosh was first over the edge of the cliff, the rope twisted about his hips as Cresh belayed him down. The descent wasn’t particularly challenging, but it was a one-mile vertical drop and caution was warranted. The plan was to belay down to the city where it nestled halfway down the cliffside, adventure, then return back up the cliff as quick as they could manage it. Brosh reached a ledge from which the city could be easily accessed, tied himself off and returned Cresh’s favour, belaying his brother as he too began his descent. Brosh was so near to the city that he could hear its constant buzz of activity, and its lights danced in his peripheral vision. Paying attention to his brother’s progress was fraught with distraction, but he managed to keep his fist tight on the rope as Cresh’s feet drew nearer. The wait seemed endless, but at last Cresh alighted next to Brosh, and they both untied themselves, and forced themselves to prepare properly for the re-ascent, laying their ropes and harnesses neatly. With that accomplished, they carefully climbed down the next ledge, unprotected from the fall. Then – before them – the city.

Only the part of the city they’d been able to see from above was visible, most of it disappeared inside the cliff. The outer wall was a delicate-looking filigree, like the veil of a forest-growing fungus, stretched out and glistening. Cresh reached out to touch it but Brosh batted his hand back, “too fragile, we’ll have to crawl in under the arch.” The arch was what in a human city might be taken for a main gate, but for this half-sized cliff city, it might be a window, or a random void. The buzz that Brosh had heard had stilled, and it was all eerily quiet in the night. Despite their size, despite their brash confidence, the brothers felt a chill at the prospect of entering the city. There were endless stories at home of the angelflies, the tiny creatures who wrought its architecture with mandibles and spit, the ones who knew they were there, and had fallen silent while their intentions were assessed. No point having come so far without keeping going… The brothers wriggled under the arch and awkwardly shuffled forwards, pulling themselves with forearms and pushing with their toes. More delicate structures surrounded them, elaborate overhanging galleries and almost invisible threads binding the city together. With much effort, the brothers pushed through along the wide avenue they followed and found themselves inside the cliff. There the ceiling rose up and they could stand once more. The city billowed out around them as if a glass blower had filled the cavern inside the mountain – the city followed the sides up and over the roof. The city contained the brothers entirely, they were in a golden snowglobe.

This is what the brothers had come to see, and they stood there in silence, breath halting as they waited. After a moment the sounds of the city resumed. The faint buzz that had been audible outside returned, as loud as a cat’s purr when you lay your head directly on their belly. They’d been judged no threat, so they began to explore. Inside, this was much easier. The city gave off its golden light, and its inhabitants emerged from whatever structures they’d been hiding in, adding their internal glow to the city. They flew, mostly, though plenty could be seen crawling and building further unfathomable objects and architecture. Cresh stepped carefully over gossamer bridges and around soaring towers. At the back of the cavern, great rows of barrel-shaped columns arched overhead, dense and strong. As they looked around, it became clear that the city was a much more solid construction than they’d imagined from its outer parts. Except for the narrow channel they’d entered by, there was no sight of rock anywhere. The little angelflies had filled the space completely. The spires that speared down from the ceiling met rising towers, almost reinforcing the city in its little hollow. Still, it was a wonderland to wander in. How such small things had made something so beautiful was the subject of many of those stories back home. Some believed the angelflies had been here as long as people, others that they’d hatched within the mountain, others that a falling star had brought them here. At first, people had stolen parts of the city – the pretty things – to make jewellery, or knives, because the stuff that the angelflies worked was harder than steel when it set. That act became one of boldness and stupidity, because the angelflies would come to get back what had been stolen. The only known incidence of violence had been when an angelfly was crushed by a thief who tried to keep hold of the golden arc he’d stolen. Whether he was bitten or infected or what, no one knew, but he’d been found in his bed the next day, golden spars growing out of his eyes and mouth, quite dead. After that, the angelflies were mostly left alone. Not quite feared, but certainly respected. Curiosity about them never dulled though, and the stories multiplied.

Deep inside the cave, the brothers noted the rising sound of the buzz around them: it grew deeper and louder, starting beneath their feet and spread all around them.

“Are they angry, do you think? Perhaps we should…” Brosh trailed off as the rumbling grew more intense. The shapes that decorated the walls around them began to move, shapes revolving like clockwork as graceful sheets of gold bloomed out from the towers and spires that pierced and penetrated the city. Cresh just shoved him forward, back toward the hole where they’d come in. It was closing, slowly being filled in by a crowd of angelflies, extruding that golden substance all around its edges. It wasn’t closed yet. Cresh knelt and gently brushed the angelflies away from the entrance, taking extreme care not to harm them, choking back his own fear of the angelflies and of being trapped as he did so. With the angelflies temporarily taken to the air, buzzing frustratedly around them, Cresh yanked Brosh to the ground and pushed him through the hole. The interior of the cavern continued to revolve and Cresh couldn’t help but watch as the architecture snapped into place, fascinating patterns interlocking. The humming increased, as did sharp explosive shocks that bled between sound and light. Brosh’s feet finally vanished and Cresh knelt down to follow him. As he pushed himself under, the angelflies began to return to their task of filling in the gap, and he blew gently at them as he passed under them. There was little he could do but wriggle faster, gasping as the hole narrowed. A moment later his brother seized his wrists and yanked him fully out into the darkness outside. They stumbled and tripped, accidentally kicking down a gleaming archway. They froze, but there was no response from the angelflies – the hole they’d entered the city by disappeared entirely and the inner city was completely sealed off.

The rumble persisted, a fully physical sensation now, shaking a shower of dirt and small stones down over the brothers. With an enormous roar, the cliff face split open, raining more rock on the gleaming outer portion of the city. The brothers huddled under what remained of the ledge that they’d climbed down to as columns of stone crashed off the cliffside to tumble into the darkness below. With an appalling scream of metal being dragged across stone, a golden orb emerged from the hole in the cliff: the angelflies’ city revolved into the night air, hung for a moment as though watching the pair closely, then rose up, up until it became just another gleaming star in the night. The brothers were left in the ruins of the outer city, the delicate shapes crushed by the falling cliff. Wordlessly, they each took up a small piece of the golden wreckage, slipped their harnesses over their hips and began the long, long climb up to the top.

Captain Monogram

Posted on 3 February 202328 April 2023 By Captain Pigheart

The warehouse appears to be empty, but my partner and I know different: this is a trap. This feels very much like every other Friday to be honest. A crime is committed, and we leap into action. I’m Kid Bungee by the way, ace sidekick to the greatest superhero of them all, Captain Monogram. That square jaw, that confident smile – he’s all superhero, all the time. Anyway, we know who is inside, because we followed the clues. Three banks robbed in a single afternoon, perpetrated by a gang of black and white clad goons and their ringleader, a villain also dressed in black and white horizontal stripes, but also wildly hairy, like a raccoon stuffed into a people suit. Their costumes are like rippling barcodes, defeating image recognition programs, but we don’t need to identify the individuals to know they’re Big Hijack’s gang. He’s the baddest of the supervillains in Temple City, and Captain Monogram have put him away more times than I can count. But he’s good at breaking out, very good indeed, and when he does he immediately resurrects his gang and goes back on the rob. Big Hijack’s a menace to the city and the people, and we’re going to stop him this time, for good. Oh – the clues. Right, well. First there are the costumes, we already recognised those, and then there was the arrow that Big Hijack must have painted on the underside of that getaway van that had been abandoned in the middle of a fast-food joint. We followed that arrow and it led us to the zoo, where letters had been shaved into the fur of all the zebras. Captain Monogram corralled them into the right order in no time, with just a few cracks of his trusty mono-whip. That gave us the address for this place. We’re down by the port – classic Big Hijack hideout territory – and it’s all quiet. We warned off the dock workers because we don’t want anyone to get hurt. Not like Big Hijack and the trail of suffering he leaves behind.

There’s only one way to deal with a trap: spring it. Captain Monogram goes in through the front door, cape billowing out behind him, his mono-pistol at the ready. I take the high road, coming down through a skylight, bungee-anklets activated. Big Hijack’s troops emerge from cover, popping out of crates and from behind cunningly placed mirrors. Captain Monogram’s mono-pistol goes pop-pop-pop and the hijackers are pummelled by a spray of tiny monogrammed discs. They fly this way and that as Captain Monogram switches weapons, his mono-pistol smoothly retracting into his utility vest, as he draws out his mono-whip and spins, each touch of the whip leaving a perfect imprint of his initials on foreheads, thighs, hands and buttocks as the hijackers fall. I’m in constant movement, bouncing, grabbing, rising and releasing the hijackers like a bouncy ball being batted about by a playful cat. As I strain the bungees I fire out a new set and change between them. All those gym sessions really pay off! I’m like a cartwheeling spider, moving too fast for the hijackers to get a bead on me. Their bullets are all near misses, but they’re always misses, even when I appear right in front of a pair of hijackers and slam their heads together, before being flung off into another corner by my latest bungee anchors. It feels great: smashing the bad guys and being so good at it. It almost makes me forget about my parents’ murders for a little while. Even thinking of them makes me glance at Captain Monogram to check how my foster-dad is doing. He’s being swarmed by the hijackers (where do they all come from), but I know this trick of his. The scrum of bad guys is suddenly launched into the air (where I can punch and kick them from all angles before they land) as Captain Monogram activates his mono-copter, its rotors spinning up out of the back of his vest and slapping them away from him. Each slap leaves his monogram on their cheeks, chins and chests.

It’s all going well, but we haven’t seen Big Hijack yet. These are just his goons and we can beat them up all week till Sunday. I keep my eyes peeled, but I’m here there and everywhere grabbing, tripping, snagging and hurling bad guys and I’m never looking in the same direction for more than a couple of seconds. I don’t see where he comes from, I just hear the roar of a chainsaw, and suddenly he’s there down on the floor with Captain Monogram. I only catch the end of it, an agonised scream from – impossible – Captain Monogram as Big Hijack’s enormous chainsaw rips right up between Captain Monogram’s legs and all the way through his body, cutting him in half, right up between his eyes. I can’t believe what I’m seeing, and I lose track of my bungees when one of the hijackers clips me with his rifle and my bungee contracts, flinging me out of a window and into the warehouse next door. I release the bungees and pull myself into a roll, but I still skid right the way across the floor. I don’t know what to do – I’ve just seen my hero, my mentor, my crime-fighting partner, my foster-father cut in half. Even from here I can hear Big Hijack’s roar of triumph. My blood is boiling and there’s nothing I want more than revenge. I pull myself together, shake off the shock and take a running jump back through the warehouse, snagging a trailing bungee with my wrist activator so it tosses me right through the broken window and I soar high over the warehouse floor.

But they’re all gone. Big Hijack and his gang have fled, their trap fully sprung and its victim lying dead in the centre of the warehouse floor, caught in a pool of swinging lamplight. I check the exits, make sure it’s not a second trap aimed at me, but there’s nothing. I do a triple flip and land perfectly on my feet just a few steps from Captain Monogram. Each half of his face shows that same look of gentle surprise, like someone’s popped out with a birthday cake and he’s taking it well, despite not wanting anyone to know he’s nearly fifty. There will be no more cakes for Captain Monogram. His mask is so good that it hasn’t even started to peel back yet, and his identity is still secret. It’s the most important thing. He drilled that into me from when I was really young. Our only protection from villains, and the only protection we can offer those we love is our anonymity as superheroes. Yet I can’t help peeling back one side of the mask, that layer of latex with a “C” over his left eye, just so I can see my foster-dad properly. His green eye stares straight past me. This is awful. I thought maybe, just maybe that it would be me who fell in battle. The sidekick, not the hero. Never the hero. I sit with him for a while, sitting in the spreading pool of his blood. I’ve got to get him out of here.

I put a tarpaulin over him that I yank off a crate, jam the lock on the warehouse door and flee into the night. We left the mono-mobile just a couple of streets away from the port, and with my bungees I use the cranes that dangle all over the place to get there In just a few swings. The mono-mobile starts with a purr and I take it back to the warehouse. I’m angry, so angry, as well as sad and frightened, so I smash through the warehouse doors and pull a skid that brings the back of the mono-mobile perfectly up next to Captain Monogram’s body. I wrap him up and take him home. Then I’m hit with the next dilemma. Captain Monogram’s dead, but the only people who know that are me, Big Hijack, and his hijackers. But no one knows that Chris Pearson, amiable Temple City insurance broker, is dead. And there’s no way an ordinary insurance guy could have ended up chainsawed in half. He works in a cubicle farm. The most dangerous thing there is either the static off the photocopier or that weird guy who hits on all the girls. If Chris shows up in the morgue like this there will be more than a few questions, and the only person around to answer them will be me, his foster-son, Peter Pearson. I’m going to have to hide him and pretend that both Captain Monogram and Chris Pearson are out of town on business, maybe forever. Or they’ve retired and moved to Maui. Or something. Oh god, it’s just me now and there are going to be so many questions. Maybe I should run too – go somewhere… But I haven’t done anything wrong, and it will just look like I killed him! It’s not my fault, it’s not me who’s been killed. But I’ve got to protect Chris’ aunt and his cousins – my aunt and cousins – if Big Hijack ever found out who Captain Monogram’s family are, he’ll stop at nothing to get at them all. In the end I put Captain Monogram in the big freezer chest in our operation centre and pile a load of cases and boxes on top of it. No one else knows where our secret base is, even though it’s just three floors below the basement level of Chris’ apartment block. I write a letter in Chris’ handwriting explaining that he’s taken a sudden leave of absence. I don’t know what to do next. There’s only one person I can call, only one person I can talk to, but Captain Monogram fell out with her last year over the Chicken Reactor fiasco. I’ve got no choice. I pick up the phone and dial in the encryption sequence he made us all learn. It starts to ring. And ring. I really hope Mega-Girl is in.

Wax, the Weatherworker

Posted on 2 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

When the weather came, she was already there. Wax the Weatherwoman. Renowed across the state. She was the closest thing to an oracle of climate that we had, and we loved her for it. Her arrival five days earlier had produced a spontaneous little festival, the woes of the last seven months suddenly put to one side, so sure were the village elders of what her appearance heralded. I’ll admit, I was sceptical. The world is dry, so damn dry now. If it won’t fall from the sky, it’s bloody work getting it out of the ground instead. Either way, crops die, animals stroke out and people follow suit. It’s bad enough that most villages and towns are migratory now. Ours, Heaven Sent, was a travelling village, but we eventually fetched up against a small hilly range with a ragged system of old mines. There’s a better chance of finding water down there, though bringing it up is dangerous in an abandoned metal mine, and for all we know it’s hopelessly contaminated. We don’t drink it directly, and it doesn’t seem to kill the crops any faster than the sun, so who knows. The mines also give us cool shelter from the sun, vast and brutal in the sky. Few like to sleep in there because those mines go deep and no one’s been all the way along the adits or properly down all the shafts. They say that when the sun swelled, a lot of bad things – things bigger and more dangerous than people – vanished from the world. They might have died out, or they might have just hidden somewhere else. I rarely sat with my back to the rough walls that shielded us from the darkness within.

It had been the worst season in my admittedly short memory, though what I recalled told me only that each season was worse than the last, that surely the next would be the last. The elders still held some hope that the rains would return and the climate would swing back to something they remembered being told about by their grandparents. That and tales of the world where it was constantly wet. I always asked why we didn’t just go there then, and the answering snorts – declarations that it was too far, or that so much rain from the sky would strip the skin from your bones – told me it was as fictional as the stories of great cities and travels through the stars. I was never one for myths. Still, we trudged on, delving ever deeper into the mine shafts, scraping and pooling what water there was down there, all the while gasping for breath. Down deep the air is bad, and if you go deep enough you have to come up slow or it feels like you’re body’s turning outside in.

When Wax showed up I was in the mines, despite my horror of what might be down there. More and more of us were taking turns to dig down and fill our flasks and buckets. At least we had light. The solar lanterns were never low on power, and they lasted all day down in the dark. We’d gotten deep enough into the old mine that it was deadly quiet, and you just followed the sound of dripping water to locate the next cache of sweet liquid. A whole set of shafts and adits had been written off as too dangerous, where braces bent and the rocks trembled, and we were looking at them again to see if they truly were beyond the pale, or if we’d risk venturing down them in search of water. I was not in favour. Instead we’d taken up picks and hammers abandoned in the mine by whoever worked it, generations ago, and were hacking our own painfully slow way, following the tracks where the water dripped down, always down. If it would only flow up… Our crew returned to the surface, filthy and in need of a sand scrub. There we found the atmosphere jubilant, near-hysterical. The rain was coming and for a time, perhaps we’d have no need to mine. Rare caches of alcohol and sugary treats were being uncovered to fete Wax the Weatherworker and toast the resurrection of hope. Very, very faintly, seen only against the setting sun a thin wisp of cloud was distantly visible in the direction from which Wax had come.

The next day Wax established an area to work in. A broad oval drawn in the dust, easily space for a dozen men to stand arms outstretched across it. Radiating out from the centre, Wax laid out an array of charms and tokens, some which I recognised like feathers, knives, oddly shaped and coloured stones, and others I didn’t: twists of fabric, perhaps bone carved into shapes that were uncomfortable to look at. When I went off to the mines later and could look down from above I saw she’d drawn an eye into the ground, the objects making up the iris and herself the pupil. Before I went back underground I saw her begin to dance.

That dance continued for three days as she hauled at the sky, exhorted the clouds to draw nearer. And they were. By the second day the clouds were plainly approaching, thick and fluffy like I hadn’t seen in years. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were coming in this direction anyway. “But why now, why not sooner, why only when Wax arrives first” were thrown back at me in spiteful tones and I gave up my questioning and hid the eye rolling when people I usually regarded as quite sensible spoke of Wax and her powers in ecstatic terms. I did bring her something though, partly to show willing, partly to have a reason to interact with her. The mine had once been for digging ore out of the rock, but there was plenty of other stuff in there too, and while idly rooting through the many heaps of waste and stone I’d found something pretty, that seemed to fit with Wax’s iris of totems. It had probably once been a tool used in the mine, about a foot long and a few inches across, jaggedly narrowing to the tip, but it gleamed with all the colours and the light rolled like oil over its surface. She didn’t dance all day and night, obviously, it was hot out there and even though she barely seemed to drink she paused regularly. No point killing your weatherwoman with heat stroke. During one of these rests, when I’d scrubbed the dirt off from down below, we had a short conversation.

“Madame Wax, may I speak with you a moment?” Always be polite, especially to someone who might be about to save your village. She turned and I hadn’t clocked her eyes before, one golden all the way out, consuming the white of her left eye, and the other normal shaped but for the startling bright green iris. It made me feel lopsided, like I was slowly falling sideways. “Um, I’ve a thing for your, um, eye,” I said, pointing at the radiating lines in the ground.

“Good,” she said, taking the long thin shard of metal from me. “Something that’s been used here before, been used to dig in, to alter the fabric of the world. If it can do that once, it can do it again.” So saying she carefully laid it into her weatherworking and turned her back on me.

The next day the clouds were so close and no one went into the mine. Instead the elders had us constructing the pools that we’d use to capture as much of the rain as we could. They’re light wooden structures, with thick watertight canvas stretched out in them. Once full, they could be drawn tight and we’d hide them away inside the mine entrances. Every vessel would be used. The village was electric with excitement. It was going to rain, we’d have water for months – if we stored it far enough into the mines – and so much would fall from the sky that we’d even wash in it. Wax stood in the middle of her eye and drew the clouds on until they were directly overhead. The sun blocked at last, it was almost cold in the middle of the day and goosebumps rose all over my body. But the clouds began to fade, their threads tearing away and the sun came back through. The clouds had failed – Wax the Weatherworker had failed. The elated mood of the village vanished in an instant and I felt suddenly afraid for the strange woman. So much rested on her success, and failure had never even been considered. Wax though showed no concern, even as the clouds parted and dissipated. She turned instead, towards the mine and took up the odd long knife thing I’d given her, winked at me and with a cry drove it into the ground.

Nothing happened, but the whole village was frozen with the drama of the moment, the fierce flipping of their emotional states, from hope to despair, to anger to hope, to confusion. Our faces must have been a picture. And then came sound. A deep rumbling that shook the ground beneath our feet, a noise that was more force than sound made the hills shudder, and then, erupting out of the mine shafts was water. More than you’d ever get from a mere cloud, this was a cavalcade, a torrent that smashed the structures and stores we’d placed in the mine entrances to shreds as the water poured down the slopes and into us. We were suddenly knee deep in water, being pushed and shoved and tripped by it. The shock gave way to hope and the elders had us redirecting the canvas pools, taking buckets and filling them from the water rushing past. In the excitement I’d missed seeing when Wax packed up her totems – somehow managing it before the oval was erased by the water. But she tapped me on the shoulder as I frantically scooped up water and threw it into a pool. Her touch startled me into stopping, but she only said a single phrase, “never doubt me,” before turning and walking off into the flood.

School Days

Posted on 1 February 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

“Just keep running,” Michael panted, casting his words over his shaking shoulders at the gaggle of children following close behind. Mostly close, some were falling back further and further, just visible as a bobbing head between the trees. Easily said, but not easily done. The little crowd had been jogging through the woods for nearly an hour, with a handful of very short breaks to allow the slowest to catch up. The slow kids had the least time to recover, since they had to reach the paused group first before they all set off again. They were going to keep falling behind unless Michael could find them somewhere to rest properly. Summoning another burst of energy from somewhere deep inside, he led them past a huge old oak then over the tiny stream. There were lots of nice flat stones to hop across, but he stopped to help the smaller children cross. Falling in and getting wet would make everything even worse.

While he waited for the stragglers to reach the stream, he strained for a better view of what they were running from. Smoke was still visible rising over the trees, and the occasional sharp spark of light, like someone had thrown one of those glass balls filled with lightning up in the air. They were beyond the sound now, at least, though it had been a terrific motivator in getting the children moving and in keeping them moving. Michael wiped sweat from his face off on the sleeves of his school shirt. The whole thing was sodden with sweat and smelled of fear. As the last of the slow kids caught up he held the little boy’s hand as he slipped across the stones. All the children had stopped for a breather after they crossed the stream, and all were watching Michael, in various states of puffing, panting and wheezing. He made his way through them, with one last glance backwards, and started off again.

They were definitely getting slower, and really since they were almost just walking quickly, perhaps that’s what they should do. But running, or trying to run really felt like doing something. Anything to put more distance between them and the chaos that had erupted at the school. Michael was just barely eleven, almost the oldest in the final year group of primary school. The troupe following him ranged from six to ten. He was impressed with the smallest of them, there had hardly been any complaining, especially since they had no water, no snacks, and no time to sit down. As far as he knew, they were the only kids to have escaped. It still wasn’t clear what had happened, but it had all gotten very bad very quickly.

Michael had been late getting back to class from morning break. He’d been playing too long and hadn’t realised he’d needed to go to the loo until after the classes had lined back up to go inside. But he’d been allowed to go – no running in the corridor – and had just made it back to class when everyone’s mobile phone started ringing. Not everyone had one, but almost everyone did, and even though they were supposed to be on silent, the children all looked at them, and so did Mrs Abbott. Michael’s phone was in his desk, but he’d only just walked in the door. When the phone screens flashed on, or unlocked or however you had your phone set up, there came an awful ear-piercing shriek, like ancient computers did when they connected to the internet. And then everyone had frozen, even Mrs Abbott, just staring at their phones. Something rose up out of the screens, a crackling blue and white shape that flickered so it sometimes looked like a person, and then was suddenly an animal or something else. It was too fast to see properly. But it rose up towards the person looking down at it, and it sort of sparkled into their eyes. Michael was still standing by the door, and the other kids who either didn’t have phones or hadn’t answered them were just staring around them, no idea what was going on. Then it all changed. Michael was watching Mrs Abbott when her head snapped back and she opened her eyes and the blue crackle was in them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other kids doing the same. It was really freaky, and Michael started to back away without even knowing he was doing it. That only attracted attention though, and a couple of kids were on their feet immediately, scrambling over the table towards him. They weren’t the only ones in motion though, and the last thing Michael saw before he slammed the door shut were kids with sparkling blue-white eyes pouncing on those other children without phones.

It didn’t seem real, but as Michael ran off down the corridor – no running in the corridor – past the other classrooms the same thing was happening there. Shrieks and cries rang out, doors burst open and kids ran out, some knocked down straight away by their classmates clawing over them, others faster and running the same way he was. The school was in an annoying L shape and Michael’s classroom was furthest from the main entrance, so he had further to run to get out. If he’d stopped outside his classroom and turned the other way, maybe he could have used the fire escape, but there was no way he was turning back. He swept up a small crowd of terrified children as he ran, his normal brown eyes assuring them that he was OK. They crashed out through the main door, which Michael held open so as many of them could get through as possible. There wasn’t much he could do about the doors – they opened inwards, so even trying to move the benches outside was pointless. They weren’t being immediately followed though. There must have been plenty of kids and staff without phones handy when that weird call came through, and for now they were being left alone. Michael cast a glance across the fields, wondering what to do. The secondary school was about a mile away, up the grassy hill. But all the older kids had phones. There would be no help there. The primary school was on the edge of the village, with houses and streets on one side. Even from there Michael could hear shouting and the sounds of cars crunching into things. There was only one real option: the woods that backed onto the school. You could get to the secondary school indirectly, but they also extended back and away from everything that had people in it. Michael wasn’t entirely sure where they ended, but he’d definitely been on family trips that went around the other side. Somewhere in the middle was a little forest school which they got to go to sometimes.

But now Michael was lost. He’d remembered the stream and he was almost certain that the forest school and its little chalet buildings must be somewhere near. Just a little further. They had slowed to a walk by then, and it was better, even though his heart was banging in his chest from all the exercise and he was dreadfully thirsty. The trees were thinning out, and maybe it was the clearing where the forest school was sited. But even as he drew nearer, Michael knew it wasn’t. He’d led them the wrong way, led them in a long curve rather than a straight line. This was the secondary school. The side of the school building was scorched, and fire still licked out of the first floor windows. There were bodies lying in grass and on the gravel outside. He pulled up short, but not all of the exhausted little kids were so quick to stop, too used to stumbling on. And they attracted attention. Faces appeared in the ground floor window, bright blue-white eyes scanning the woods. All the children were still by now, finally following Michael’s lead. It was too late. With a shriek, the faces of the older children in the window did something and the glass exploded outward, swiftly followed by two girls and a boy, all much older than Michael. They moved jerkily, and their gaze never left Michael. He was frozen – what could he do? He’d tried to get them all away, but here they were and something bad was about to happen to them all.

Then a huge old estate car (like the one that Michael’s dad had finally swapped for an SVU) roared up from nowhere and struck the three kids jerking towards them. It made a bad crunching sound, and the trio were flung backwards and into the air. They didn’t get back up. The passenger door swung open and there was a lady inside screaming at Michael to get inside. It was a squeeze, but they got all fourteen of the kids jammed in the car, and the lady threw the car into reverse and raced out of the school grounds. They were safe, for now.

Original Skin

Posted on 31 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

I miss my original skin. This skin is thin and weak, tears easily, bruises, needs to be moisturised and cared for. Not like the skin I came to Daneer’s World wearing. We burned out of the sky, released just beyond the outer atmosphere by our hit and run cruiser. Four hundred of us, like flaming angels wearing just our combat skins and loaded for trouble. The feeling of being aflame against the increasing air pressure as we roared inwards. Our target was, of course, the troubled city of Kromesh. While an ordinary assault might require us to land outside and work our way in, we had a more aggressive mission. We landed inside the heart of the city, in a near-perfect set of concentric rings. The ash and soot from our entry was easily dusted off, that thicker outer layer designed solely to protect us and burn away had done its job. Underneath we were smooth, seamless creatures of combat. Weapons systems came online, moving slickly under our skin until micro-railguns stretched through the skin to rest on shoulders, velocity rifles through the forearms, and blades. So many blades. We felt every moment of it, felt the wind against our skin, local heat and humidity, electromagnetic fields, everything. It was the apex of feeling alive. The next hours were about taking lives. Daneer’s World had broken away, abandoned its treaties and duties. We were there to ensure it returned to the fold, no matter what it took. Funny thing about the combat skin is the sheer elation you feel while wearing it. It’s supposed to dispense drugs straight into the bloodstream to counteract the utter delight it is to move, feel and fight in, but they don’t always work. Especially not in the thrill of combat. We moved through the city like a tornado, a whirling storm of death. And it felt amazing. Knowing the precise temperature and density of blood splashing over you, even feeling the distinctive electric signature of a life fading away – all of it. We did our job, crushed the militia within the city, stormed the parliament and removed all obstacles to reinstituting imperial command. We didn’t know that while we were hard at work, so too were the imperial envoys. Their job is like ours, but with words, promises and threats. We’d already outstripped the worst of the threats they could have made, those who’d have been threatened were dead. That left them with promises, and when the scale of the massacre we’d been deployed for became clear, they started to backpedal. There was no doubt we were imperial troops – no one else wears combat skin, it’s too expensive and has to be grown specifically for the operative wearing it – so they had to work through their plausibly deniable alternatives. So apparently we’d gone rogue, or been dispatched by a rogue imperial unity alliance who had taken things a bit too far when seeking their beloved unity. A real shame, and all the envoys could promise was that there would be punishment and restitution – when Daneer’s World rejoined the empire, obviously. We were down less than a quarter of our invading force (those combat suits are really very good) and that was only a result of heavy artillery that you’d normally only sling at warships, and building collapse, a consequence of using weapons never meant to be deployed in a city. That left three hundred and some of us. We got the message from the hit and run cruiser who had dropped us off that we weren’t going to be picked up, that we’d been disavowed, dumped and abandoned. We picked up the transmissions confirming the public relations choices the envoys had made, and understood what they’d done to us. Daneer’s World folded to imperial pressure. Of course they did, we’d eliminated the vast majority of their renegade government and laid waste to their capital city. That compliance meant we were now the other half of the bargain, no longer the threat, now the hunted to be punished as a promise. It wasn’t clear whether we were going to be rounded up and arrested, shipped out somewhere else for a mission on the other side of the empire as had happened before. When we saw the shooting stars heading our way we knew what had been decided: another battalion had been dispatched to clean us up. Some of us were still spoiling for another fight, a fight that would utterly demolish this city, whether they sent overwhelming numbers or not. Or we could run. Or hide. We were no longer a coherent unit since our governance had been removed, and we were free to act as we pleased. So we split up. Those wishing to keep fighting stuck together, a lot of us fled the city seeking better ground and maybe a ship offworld. Some of us opted to hide, but we all had to get out of the city first. I chose to hide, to hide by exposing myself and sinking into Daneer’s World. The combat skin isn’t easy to remove. The application process involves being soaked in the stuff until it fills and penetrates every pore, and it’s undone by a bunch of enzymes that make it run off you like jelly. We didn’t have any of those, so I scraped and cut the suit off my skin. If you kill enough of the suit, it’s eventually dissolve on its own account, but you have to get something like ninety-five per cent of the external surface off to make it do that. It’s tough stuff, and not easy to get into – the weapons ports are the only time there’s a natural hole in the suit, and that only for a second – just enough time to get a knife under the skin. Getting it off my face was the worst, like shaving my eyeballs with a knife. Finally, when I’d pared back enough of it, feeling all those glorious additional senses compromised and failing, it triggered the breakdown sequence, combat skin bleeding back out of my pores. Free of the combat skin we looked just like everyone else. Well, I looked like the I’d just been in an awful accident, fire, shuttle crash and thrown through barbed wire all at the same time. Thankfully, there were an awful lot of people making their way out of the city who looked pretty much the same: the lucky survivors of our assault. It was easy enough to join the crowds fleeing the wreckage and seeking shelter in nearby towns and villages. I was a refugee now, surrounded by those I’d brought much suffering to. It wasn’t easy to fit in. I mean, it was appallingly easy to fit in, to just pretend to be one of them, trapped in skin that just felt pain. But accepting their help, sympathising with their grief and pain… It’s not what we’d come here for. Feigning shock and trauma got through a lot of questions. I’d lost track of the rest of the unit, apart from seeing the distant shooting matches in the city ruins. I didn’t know what any of the other troops looked like, and the skin removal damage wasn’t much worse than the state of half these people. It took months to be resettled, and now it seems that I’m a baker, of all things. The imperial troops are still looking for us, having successfully tracked down everyone still in combat skin, but they have the same problem telling us apart that I do. I suspect that I’m stuck here now, baking, living a life that I’ve stolen from somebody else. I still miss my original skin.

Harvest Time

Posted on 30 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

When I began gathering the eggs, it was a compulsion that at first hauled me up out of sleep and while still barely awake, out of my flat and into the apartment complex. That first egg was hidden away in the bowels of the block, down in the sub-basement level where no one usually went. Whether it was really an egg or not I didn’t know – it had the rough shape of a hen’s egg, but made up of flat planes, like someone had made a wireframe egg on an ancient home computer, and then then painted it all gold, but not very well – a rough crust of gold. That one was about the size of both my fists placed together, and heavier than it looked, for all that it might have been gold when I first picked it up. I walked out into the carpark in my pajamas and bare feet and only then noticed the cold under my toes. There was a car waiting for me and I handed the egg through the driver’s window to the man inside. There was something wrong with his face, like he’d been in an accident and had massive plastic surgery. He croaked out a thanks and I returned to bed. When I woke up properly it had the quality of a dream, and only my grimy feet which had left filth all over my bedsheets suggested I might not have dreamed it.

That was all a long time ago, and now that strange sensation that once roused me at night comes to me at all times of day of night. I’m not compelled to do it. More and more it feels like the right thing to do. Like I’ve been chosen for a great undertaking. It feels good to be chosen, to be useful. I was the kid picked last for football, and I sat at the back of the class alternately working and frantically colouring in the margins of every page of my textbooks. I can’t say adult life got much better, but office work is tolerable and it pays for my quiet little apartment. I’m a roundish sort of person – not unlike the eggs I collect, but I think the waistcoats mask it well enough. I’ve certainly been getting more exercise since the eggs entered my life.

It’s hard to explain how I know where to go, but it’s as if there’s some link between the eggs and a place inside me. Like a compass, or an invisible thread that links us and it reels me in as I draw nearer. Sometimes I imagine I’m stationary and pull on the thread, making the whole world move toward me until the egg is safely in my hands. They’re funny little things. Like I said, they’re not round like a real egg, more a rough approximation. And that gold colour comes off too. There are parts of my hands I just can’t get it off – it looks like I have gilded palms. I think about wearing gloves, but unless it’s brutally cold it doesn’t feel right. There’s something about the contact that is electrifying, that feeling of doing the right thing. I imagine it’s how someone who is really good at dancing feels when space on the dance floor opens up around them and they’re being worshipped by the other dancers. It feels like that. Accomplishment, satisfaction, reward.

Lately the frequency of eggs has increased. At first it was just every few weeks, long enough for me to almost forget about them, especially when they woke me up from dreaming. Now it’s daily and I’m having to invent excuses to leave the office, or extend my lunchbreaks. My supervisor seems a little concerned, but I explained that I have a health condition. I’m perfectly happy to make up the work time, and they seem mollified by that for now. Yesterday I learned that the eggs have a name: ir. I don’t know what it means, but apparently I am an ir-harvester. Sorry if this seems a bit jumbled, but it can be hard to place these things in order. I don’t mean yesterday, I don’t think.

It was perhaps the most unusual collection of ir I’d experienced. I felt the call in my head and my heart and in my feet and in the tips of my elbows. It was almost lunchtime so I ducked my head and made my way out of the office and into the lift. I realised I’d need a car, so I borrowed one of the office cars. They’re for meetings with clients and so forth, but the keys are just in a case behind reception. I drove the boxy little thing (no need to take one of the expensive saloons) and drove way out across town until I reached the edge of the shallow river that skirts the town to the east. A bit of a puzzle, as that thread led directly through the water. I got out of the car to get a better look, and on the other side, underneath the shadow of railway bridge that runs over the river, there’s a little sandbank or whatever. On it crouched a woman, and I could just make out the glint of the egg – the eggs, plural! – hidden behind her. I was immediately concerned that someone else might have found the eggs. That wasn’t supposed to happen – they’re not for just anyone. She waved. I got back in the car and carefully drove into the river. It was only a foot or so deep here in the middle of summer, but I proceeded slowly, just in case. Miraculously, the car didn’t give out, though it did fill up with river water. I drove to within a few feet of the woman, and got out of the car. Immediately she started pressing eggs into my hands to place in the back seat.

“I’ve never met another ir-harvester,” she said as she passed me yet another golden egg, “but of course I knew there were more of us.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that. I had never occurred to me that there were more of us. But then I’d never wondered what happened to the eggs after I gave them to the man in the car. This woman, this fellow ir-harvester, had seven eggs. Seven! Three were very large, bigger than my head with the others diminishing in size almost to the size of a hen’s egg you might find in a supermarket. We were both soaked up to the waist. I offered her a lift somewhere, but she said she knew that I knew where I was going, and she got out once I’d driven the car back to the riverbank. The car wasn’t in very good shape, with the footwells sloshing with water. I shrugged and drove off to meet the man who would be waiting for me.

His face seemed less like a face every time we met, though I felt mean for thinking it. The doctors can’t always put a face back together properly can they, not if the damage was bad enough. His face was more like a stack of thick fleshy wedges that somehow made me think it was a face. He accepted the eggs, and croaked his thanks. This time though he said something else, looking at me as I dripped water everywhere. He said “the time is coming” and “be ready”.

I left him excited and returned the car to the parking pool, taking some care to ensure no one saw me return the key for the rather soggy car. I sat in my wet clothes at my desk for the rest of the day, but I don’t think anyone noticed. I didn’t, I was too excited. When I got back to my apartment and showered and changed I discovered that the gold leaf or whatever it was had transferred to my stomach and arms, presumably from carrying all those eggs while wet. It wasn’t just paint though, the golden patches on my stomach and arms had that same rough texture as the eggs. Strange, but oddly comforting too.

Over the next few weeks I gathered many more eggs. I had to call in sick to work and pretended I had a doctor’s note because I just couldn’t make enough time to spend at the office. I harvested twenty ir one day. I saw the woman several times, collecting the eggs she had harvested as well as twice when I met the man who received them. She was excited too, I could tell. There was a smile that tipped up only the very corners of her mouth and her eyes were wet and warm. I knew the feeling – it’s the same expression I saw on myself in the mirror. Her hands were all golden too, and although she wore a thick cardigan buttoned tightly at her neck, I was sure she too was becoming golden all over. Her name is Kathryn55.

I’d had no phone calls from work. I’d sort of expected to be pestered about returning to the office, but they seemed to have forgotten me. I didn’t mind, it gave me time to do what I loved, and who would ever complain about something like that. I think we’re on to today now. It can be hard to tell. I spent last night retrieving ir from the roof the local art gallery. You’d think it would be harder to get into some of these places, but there always seems to be a way, and people don’t notice me when I’m on ir business. I was a bit tired, because the call came every few hours but I had become quite good at napping. I’d even rented a car, or I think I did. I had a car and its keys, but I don’t remember renting it, even though there’s a “Top Car Rentals” sticker on the dashboard.

Today is the big day, what we’ve been waiting for, Kathryn and I. I feel tingly all over, and like there are tickling pins in my stomach. First I have to collect some more ir. This time they’re precariously balanced in a child’s treehouse. It’s a bit of a squeeze and the rope ladder wasn’t much fun getting up, but there are three eggs clustered around the edge of the hole where you climb up. They’re encrusted together, so at least they are easy to pick up and hold under one arm while I sweat through the descent. With them safely in my car I set off. It’s a much longer drive, and it eventually leads me to one of the big hydroelectric dams. There’s a road that drops down the side of it and a set of low buildings. I drive between them and get out. Always knowing where you’re going feels immensely reassuring. I used to get lost all the time, but I always know where the ir is and where it needs to be. There’s a roll up door which has been unlocked, so I push it up and go under, shutting the door behind me. It looks more like a self-catering hotel room than a lock-up at a power station. I place the eggs on the breakfast bar and sit down to wait, scratching a little at the encrusted gold on the heels of my palms and wrists.

Kathryn arrives first, with her own ir which she places on the counter too, and then sits down on the bed to wait. We chat a little, but we’re both nervous with excitement and soon fall into a comfortable silence. It’s a while after that that the man arrives. Maybe it’s the different lighting, but for the first time I can see that he really isn’t a man at all. Those fleshy wedges that I thought made up his face only look like a face from certain angles when the light is right. It’s more like someone with a huge mouth has stuffed their face with slices of ham and tipped their head way back so the meat is all you can see. He too has crusts of gold like nodules attached to his skin. From a bag he pulls out two bags of prawn crackers that you might get from a takeaway, and croaks, “eats”. While we eat he asks me to unbutton my waistcoat and shirt. I feel a touch self-conscious with Kathryn there, but he asks her to do the same, so I do it anyway. My round belly is all golden now, though its texture is more like rough concrete. Kathryn’s is the same, though much less round, except for her breasts which are also golden, and all of the same texture as my body.

The man encourages us to keep eating while he takes the ir from the counter and gently pushes first one into my stomach, and then a second into Kathryn. Our skin isn’t really skin any more: the eggs part the skin of my belly like it’s molten metal or paint. Once they’re inside I feel warm and content, and a little sleepy. I sit on the bed with Kathryn and we lie down together while the man with the face made of meat keeps pressing ir into us. I feel very full, but good. Kathryn and I hold hands and lie facing each other. I think everything is going to be OK now, always.

The House

Posted on 27 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

I’m hiding in a wardrobe, wondering how long I have left to live. It’s not a comfortable feeling even if we knew it was going to come to this eventually. The set-up: the House, an old country mansion, still grand but it had obviously been abandoned for decades before the company bought it and redecorated. Inside it looks how you’d imagine the wealthy lived: deep carpets, animal heads on the walls, an excess of textured wallpaper and wood panelling. They don’t make much of an effort to hide the bullet holes, though some effort is plainly made to clean the carpets and furnishings. I guess there’s only so much point in a thorough cleaning when another murder party is coming in. Not that it’s a continuous flow of killers – this is an expensive outfit, available only to the hyper-rich who simply cannot be touched by the law.

Fuck, there’s someone coming in the room – one sec.

Who doesn’t look in a wardrobe? Not that I’m complaining, but I’m pretty sure that guy was me. Or rather, I’m him. That’s unusual, apparently. I should explain. I, and the other five (scratch that – four) hiding in the house aren’t just some random homeless people rounded up by the company. Nothing so simple. We’re force-grown clones, created and matured solely for the purpose of being murdered by the rich and famous. At first they did acquire homeless people, abducted immigrants and the like from people trafficking operations, and let them loose in the House. While it was fun, it wasn’t enough for the billionaires. The next phase was plastic surgery, so the poor bastards were made to look like whoever it was the customers hated most. Still not good enough, so when human cloning was fully banned under any circumstances, naturally the company picked up the right tech and people to truly tailor their operation to their customers’ needs and desires. Exes, government ministers, movie stars, your family… you could have the company breed up a set of clones to take out your worst impulses on, the people you most want to kill but can’t quite afford to. They might be above the law, but even their elite scum still frowns a little on publicly killing your own children, even if they’re really obnoxious. So… us.

We get about six months of life. Not quite as much as your average lamb. We have to be up and running for a while because otherwise we’re just drooling idiots slumped on a chair, and while that might well suit a certain fucked kink, it’s so much better if we can run, defend ourselves a little and fundamentally understand that we’re going to die. We’re even briefed on who we’re clones of and who’s going to be killing us. I realise this makes us all sound really passive, but for half that time we’re reeling from the forced growth, getting muscle control and learning how to talk. It’s fast, but for most of the six months we don’t even know what we’re for. I wonder sometimes if real people know what they’re for, or if they just make it up as they go along. Seems like the people hunting us today have it all already.

The one whose face I have is a tech trillionaire, and the idea that he wants to kill himself is undoubtedly a fascinating psychological trauma, as is knowing that the rest of our little cohort are made from his wife, parents, uncle, and two people he once worked with. We know enough to look and sound like them, but there’s only so much point in learning to be them. I mean, they’re going to kill us regardless. Officially, in the company labs we’re just called substitutes, but I once heard one of the development techs call us something else when he thought I wasn’t listening: “killables.”

There are two killers in the house – the trillionaire and his twin sister. I caught a glimpse of them kissing after they shot his mother, so I guess this is all playing out some ghastly family psychodrama that I’ll never get the chance to understand. There’s a weird agony to the situation that I didn’t expect: we’re here to die and there’s no prospect of survival because we’re in the House, which is fenced in (at a decent distance so you can’t see it from the House) and surrounded and monitored by the company. And yet… if there were a way to live on, I’d take it, surely? Even though our lifespans are naturally short; all that forced growth comes at a cost. At most, a clone grown like me has a couple of years before cancer and organ breakdown aggressively overwhelm my body. But it’s better than six months.

It’s a thought that carries me out of the wardrobe and stealthily climbing the stairs to the second floor. That carpet’s good for lots of things. I duck below the banister as the killers step out onto the landing, shoving his wife hard into the railing. She’s bleeding from the shoulder and head. I’ve known her all my life. With a laugh and a shout, the trillionaire hoists her up and pushes her over the rail. It’s two floors down to a hard wooden floor. Someone’s running, and the twin-sister heads off alone down the hall towards the guest suites. It turns out that surprise is really useful: I follow the trillionaire as he walks back into the bedroom where they found his wife. He’s left his pistol on the bed. I take my chance. With an ungainly leap I knock him down before he gets to the bed. In the forced growth training there’s a lot of gym work to inject decades-worth of muscle growth and strength in just a few months. We’re slightly over-muscled as a result, and it makes up for my slacker reflexes and speed. My weight carries him to the floor and his head makes an incredible sound against the ridiculous animal claw carving on the feet of the bed. Quickly, I strip him and me, and I put on his clothes. Whatever they’re made of feels nothing like anything that’s ever touched my skin before.

Shots ring out elsewhere in the house, and I hurry to stuff the trillionaire’s unresponsive limbs into my clothes. It’s not easy, but they’re on him. Then I pick up the pistol. I’ve never held one before, but I’ve seen this pair use them. Flick this little catch just so, then I shoot the trillionaire in the back of the head. I feel dizzy, like I’ve just killed myself. Is this hope that I feel in my heart, this fluttering sensation? Is it fear that I’ve broken my purpose, done the opposite of what I’m for? I step unsteadily back out onto the landing and his – my – twin comes back up the hall. She’s whistling and spinning her own pistol around in her fingers. She looks happy. I don’t say anything, just gesture to the corpse of me in the bedroom. She squeals and tells me well done, then throws her arms around my neck and kisses me hard. It’s my first kiss, and I’m utterly carried away, lost in the sensation, the warmth and closeness.

At last we detach, and she steps back slightly, a frown growing on her face. I don’t wait. I shove her hard, and she flips back over the same railing they threw my wife over. So. I’m him now. And if I’m him, and if I want to leave this place as him and live whatever kind of life he lived, even if it’s just for a year, I need to do what he would do. I pick up my twin-sister’s gun from the floor, make sure it’s still loaded. Then I go looking for the other killables.

Don’t Screw Up

Posted on 26 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

It’s easy, they said. Just don’t screw it up, they said. Even an idiot could do it, they said. Inspiring words which grew less inspiring the more I fretted about the consequences of failure. They were pretty stark. Here we were, the habitat colony in orbit around the third moon of Junas. Decent place to live, plenty of work. Crucially, plenty of non-space work. Most of the kids in my generation were mad keen to get outside, do some tooling around in zero gravity, maybe fly some shuttles back and forth between the moons. Hell with that. Space is exactly what I thought it was: a death trap. You can’t breathe out there, if you get exposed to it, the pressure is so low that your blood boils inside you. I mean, just no. No to all of that. Sure, being in a space station just means that you’re surrounded by vacuum, but it’s the closest you can get to being on a planet, which is just a space station so large you don’t notice that you’re surrounded by space.

It’s not like I had a choice. I was born here, I never chose to live in a bubble of air. Who would? My parents and their lunatic colleagues I guess, who had enthusiastically leaped at the chance to travel hundreds of millions of miles from their nice comfy planet to do a geo-survey of Junas, miserable death planet below. Of course, they didn’t know that when they set out. All the spectral analyses had shown a world with every chance of supporting life. But you really do need to see a world close up to make sure it’s actually what you’re looking for. Junas looked great from home, but when they arrived they discovered that it’s basically made of death. Plenty of nitrogen and oxygen, but they rain down in acidic compounds which are slowly dissolving all the land surfaces. And the “water” content is equally awful. It took them fifteen years of dodging cancer in a can of trapped farts to learn all this. It’s a hard ask to just turn back and head for home, knowing that you’ll mostly be sixty plus when you get there – if you get there – and you’ll have wasted thirty years in transit. I can see why no one fancied that. So instead they unfolded their spaceship and set up camp around the moons. There’s not much on the moons to write home about either, but they wanted to achieve something, anything. And then maybe they’d head back after a few years. The moons aren’t exactly liveable, but they’re where most of the real water and useful elements that aren’t being dissolved into slurry are, so I suppose it wasn’t the worst possible plan. The worst possible plan was allowing people to start having babies. The second that happened they were screwed. There was no way they could make a child endure the trip home – fifteen years away from a decent gravity well would play merry hell with their development. As it was they had to establish a moonbase just to handle giving birth and infancy. Then we all got shipped back to the orbital stations where gravity was spun up to a fraction below Earth-normal. And that’s why I’m here, because the great astronauts of my parents’ generation could not keep it in their pants. Or at least use contraception reliably. Gives you real hope for their successful operation of air and power.

Speaking of, the current hideous situation. As you might imagine, there’s a dire lack of jobs and work to do that aren’t all utterly critical to the survival of what’s turned out to be the Junas colony. It’s all hands on deck, all the time. Apparently the people back home are sending an expansion set of tools and materials to make the colony larger and more self-sufficient, but it’s been twenty years so who knows. I mean, who are you going to get to pilot that roadtrip to nowhere? There’s talk of taking the whole lot back to Earth once we’ve reached an undecided upon age. Hard to imagine that working either, rebuilding a shuttle out of the mess we’ve scattered around and on a couple of moons. I think we’re stuck here. And like I say, there’s nothing to do that isn’t mission critical. We don’t have any artists, or checkout supervisors or, I don’t know, bus drivers. Here it’s either water, air, food, heating, infrastructure. It’s all so intense and essential. Free time is for getting into awkward fights, awkward drug and alcohol use and awkward sex. Of all the people here, we’re the lot that really don’t want kids.

I’ve refused to go outside, so I’ve got a “cushy” job, in the greenhouses. They’re right up on the edge of the station, so while I’m not outside I’m as close as you can get, so thanks for that. The view, except for the bleak expanse of utter darkness is pretty good though: Junas looks amazing, and the sun beyond is even stronger (relatively, from this orbit) than back on Earth, apparently. That means it’s a good spot for the crops. I’m not the only one who works here of course. There are six of us tending to the nutritional needs of the colony, plus we’ve got another two on the meat tanks. End of shift, before we vanish behind both the moon and Junas for seven hours. I was just finishing up, switching all the ultraviolet lights on to keep photosynthesis going overnight, and everyone else had sloped off already. That’s when the “unthinkable” happened, or as I like to think of it, the “utterly obvious, bound to happen sooner or later” event of a load of space debris smashing into the main body of the space station. We’ve avoided plenty of events like this before, shunting the station around in orbit to evade meteorites or even our own jettisoned space junk. It was only a matter of time.

The klaxons and pulsing red lights are remarkable not only in being impossible to ignore, but for how they push right on whatever part of the brain generates headaches. They came on at almost the instant of impact, so even if you weren’t being sucked out into the death outside, you sure knew that it was coming. All the internal bulkheads came down fast and hard. I was trapped in the greenhouse, but that was on the opposite side of the station, and I guess there was enough station to slow the particles down before the reached me. I stood there feeling freaked out until I realised we should be checking in. That’s when I found out I was the only one in a position to fix it. The voices on the other end were intensely calm, quietly panicking – I recognised it from how all the original astronauts talk. They were trained to stay calm through utter disaster and keep it together even while people were dying around them and the air whistled out of their helmets. It’s quite scary to grow up with, and wildly intimidating.

There’s an airlock from the greenhouse, a legacy of when all these units were chained together to make a spaceship. All I need to do is suit up, which I obviously know how to do, open the airlock and go outside. Into that boiling freezing expanse of nothing. I can just walk across the hull, halfway round the station to where the main power coupling has been knocked loose. According to my parents it’s not even damaged, just bumped. I’ll need to shove it back into place and turn a massive switch. Then come back inside. The power will return, the air pumps will work, the station will heat back up and everyone will live. Everyone who’s not already dead. They’ve been evasive about that: “casualties yet to be determined”, but there’s no point worrying about who’s alive if everyone will be dead in two hours anyway.

I’ve got the suit on. It’s made for someone shorter than me. All us second generation are taller than our parents – we’ve stretched out in the lower gravity – and like the doors being fractionally too low, all the suits are just that bit too small. I squeezed in, and it makes me walk like what I think a dinosaur walked like, hunched over with short arms, like mine are because my shoulders are pinned back, and this suit sleeve feels like a flipper. I don’t know about this. I can’t see it going well. I have made it as far as getting in the airlock, but the voices in my helmet were starting to lose their infernal cool, so I turned it to silent. I can do this, I’m sure I can. I’m totally going to go out there and save the colony. Save us, and doom us to living in this tin can where everything is too small, and there’s too little of everything. That’s worth saving, isn’t it?

Night of the Moths

Posted on 25 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

The grimy, ancient old boy was carefully maneuvered into the saloon and dropped with relative care into a solid wingback chair nearest the smouldering fire. He’d been found wandering outside the town limits, ragged and raving, plainly exhausted. That was also stank was unspoken in all but the distance immediately claimed by the two brothers who had brought him in.

“He was out past Darvell’s farm, in the fell,” said Ben, the taller of the two brothers, “I barely saw him, but Jesse spotted that shaggy head of hair.”

“Like a lost lamb, dancing on past the weeds,” added Jesse.

“When we got to him he just screamed, all wordless in our face. If he hadn’t looked so terrified, reckon I’d have knocked him down and left him there.” Ben was making a vain attempt to wipe the encrusted stench off his denim shirt.

“You did well lads,” the saloon owner congratulated them, “why not have yourselves a drink on me.”

The two brothers vanished for the bar without a second thought, leaving the saloon owner, one Barley Smith, myself and the sawbones, Doctor Murkell in a ring around the old man. Barley snapped his fingers and was brought tea and a whiskey to bring some life back to the ragged fellow. He took them without looking and swallowed without a care for the heat of the tea. His eyes kept falling closed but would flicker back open after less than a second, eyeballs rolling all around.

“He needs to eat too, before he does sleep. And I can help him along with that,” murmured Murkell who was peering into the old man’s face.

“That can wait. I want to know what brought him to our town in a condition so plainly unfit for travel,” I said, rolling a cigarette and jerking my chin at him, “nearest township is Mother’s Lake, some twenty miles north, near enough in the direction the boys found him wandering. I’ll send riders, but I want to know what they’ll be riding into first.”

“Well let’s be about it,” Barley agreed, and took the old fellow by the shoulders and spoke directly into his face, “hey, old timer. What’s your story?”

Apparently, being addressed was the thing he’d been waiting for, because his ancient gums flapped apart, treating Barley to atrocious breath that he visibly wilted under. The jaws open, he ground his teeth together inn a disturbing wet sound and began to speak. Not all of it made sense, not all of it was English, but for the sake of a proper record I’ve transcribed what I could here.

“I always liked animals. Kept a goat, dogs. Had a horse. Two sheep and a house of chickens. Liked the squirrels when they came in spring. Funny little things, always busy. Never stopping. The cat hated them, like they were some mortal foe. Didn’t get that many though, never mind how hard he tried. You know where you are with animals. They either need you or don’t, and they’ll let you know which. No doubts, no mistakes. I always sat on the porch at night, drinking Jenny Fenship’s moonshine with my pipe. Just the one lantern, seeing what it’d draw forth from the woods and grass. Ever seen a moth, sheriff? Course you have. We’ve all seen em. I liked to see them up close – you can catch em with a light if you put up a sheet in front of it. They’ll all just crawl over the sheet and you can get a good look. Funny little things, got little faces, and all furry and feathery – not what you’d expect when they’re just bottling around your light. Well, I did that sometimes too. Put up a sheet and see what I’d get. Sometimes drew them too, swapped them for Jenny’s moonshine, I did. She said she liked their little ears. One night, couldn’t have been more than a week ago I had my sheet up and light shining behind it. Got the usual horde of little bugs and moths when whoomph something bigger whacked into the sheet. I’ve had bats come down because they’re smart and know the light will draw out their dinner, but this wasn’t a bat. It had hit the sheet and apparently confused itself because when I shook the sheet it feel right off, didn’t even try to hang on like a moth would. Not that it was a moth, not really. Too big, but I called it a moth because it had a face like one, big triangle eyes and all these waving feelers on its head. Like a moth but the size of a squirrel. Heavy too. It seemed to have stunned itself so I popped it on the table next to my chair and let it gather itself. Wings were unusual too – not all delicate like a moth. You mostly can’t even touch those without getting their wing dust everywhere, and then they’ll not be flying again and you may as well feed them to the bats. This feller had solid wings, like a bat I guess, but feathered like a bird. Shimmered like paraffin poured in a puddle. Pretty, except for the teeth. You don’t really see moth teeth, though I suppose they have them somewhere in that little mess of jaws. This one had proper teeth, thin and sharp. Gave it a hungry aspect. Don’t know what I was thinking, but along with my moonshine that night I’d been chewing on a little sausage, and since we were sitting side by side I offered it a bite, half joking, but like I say you just need to find out whether an animal needs you or not. This one did, and it near took off my finger in its hunger. After a bit it flew off, and I didn’t think no more about it till the next night when it came back. Flew straight past the lantern and landed on the table, all friendly and hungry. Even let me pat it a little. Then it gnawed straight down a sausage I gave it. Stuck around a bit, vanished by the time I went to bed. Kept coming back, I kept feeding it. Nice to have a new friend, and he sat still enough to get drawn too. When I showed my sketch to Jenny Fenship she’d have none of it – just laughed at the mad thing I’d drawn and said she’s never seen it’s like. And that I’d a fine imagination, but she’d much rather have a nice drawing of a ladybug or somesuch. Then she reminded me that we were all set for a dance in the town that Saturday, and I should dig out my dancing boots. I’d forgotten, busy as I was out on the farm. During that day that is, by night I’d be out on my porch. Anyway, my little friend came back a few more times and then I didn’t see him for a few nights. I guessed he’d gone back to whatever animal business he had. We don’t think of animals right you know. Folks figure they’re sort of here for us to do whatever we will with them, but if you watch them, they’ve got their things to do. Ever watched a cat walk around a room, stepping around things you can’t see, taking angles it’d never occur to you to make? They’re all like that, animals. All got their own secret projects, plans and longings. Sometimes that longing is for a bit of sausage, but it seemed like my moth’s plans had changed, or I’d never really known how I fitted into them. Not to worry. I got all dressed up for the dance and let my horse Henry carry me into town. I love a good dance, all the townsfolk looking smart and fancy. The big Carlsson barn all done up with lights and bunting, and the instruments that emerged from wherever folks hid them when there was no dance. I’d never have guessed that young Adrian played – or had – an accordion, but he fit in well with the rest of the players. I did get a dance with Jenny Fenship, which I reckoned was a great honour, but it left me a little out of breath, so I retired to a table for a drink and chat. It was not long after that there was a thud on the roof – loud enough to be heard over the dancing and singing. Folks figured it was a bird confused in the night, but then it was followed by another, and another. Soon enough it was like night hail. The band stopped playing and there was a look of consternation on the faces around me. A sound like a big millipede running over a tin roof, except this roof was wood, and I reckoned there was no millipede big enough but that’s what it sounded like. Jim Danson, the big landowner from across the other side of the valley from me, he caught up a rifle from by the door and pulled it open, stepped quietly outside. He came back in fast enough, something stuck to his face. At first there was nothing but his shrieks and folks came running to help. But the door was open by then, and Jim’s troubles were the least of it. I knew what they were immediately of course, I’d had a moth sharing my porch for weeks. But there were a lot more of them now, a lot more. And they swarmed into the barn, spinning and dropping from the air onto the townsfolk who stood in the dancing square. As yet they’d not fanned out to the tables scattered, and being further scattered as folks stood and ran this way and that. Knowing what they were – the moths – I tried to take Jenny Fenship’s arm and draw her away before they grew tired with feeding on the other folks. And they were hungry still, that same hunger I’d seen in my little friend’s fangs, now buried in the flesh of people I’d known since I was young. I tried to explain to Jenny, and reminded her of the drawing I’d done, but those were the wrong words and she pulled away. One of the moths landed in her hair and bit down. I tried to bat it away, but it turned and hissed at me, frightening enough that I fell on my rear. There were hundreds, maybe more, a black whirlwind in the middle of the barn, and they were all teeth now. There was no escape, or so I thought. Young Adrian (of the accordion) was busy knocking a hole in the far end of the barn and he urged a few of us onward to help and flee. A few of us got through, and we ran. I think we’d all assumed the moths were all inside, engaged in their feast, but they’d left plenty on watch above. Without warning, young Adrian went down, as did the three or four others who’d followed us. I kept waiting for the feel of a moth landing on my clothes or my hair, but none did. Even when I stopped and stood there, dumb with horror. I couldn’t stand it, and I went back to the door of the barn and picked up Jim’s rifle where he’d dropped it outside, racked it and opened the door. I only wish I hadn’t. It was a massacre. There was nothing moving but the moths as they fed. Everything else was just red and still, save where the blood ran. One of the moths’ heads raised as I came in, looked straight at me. I’m not sure how I knew, but I did know that this was the same moth I’d shared my porch with, fed and nurtured. It was all my fault. I didn’t know their scheme, didn’t know what they’d wanted, thought I’d just made a friend. But I’d led them all to a greater harvest than that little one had ever imagined. So I ran, and kept running till I could run no more. Then I walked, walked till I could walk no more. And then I crawled, just kept crawling to be away. Away from that.”

His tale done the old man settled back into dull stupor, staring sightless into the embers of the fire.

“Don’t reckon you should be sending anybody into that, sheriff,” Barley said.

I couldn’t help but agree. Someone would have to go though, and I reckoned that someone was going to have to be me.

Return to the Alltree

Posted on 24 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

The outer surface of the sphere was coated in a thick layer of frost. It glistened, half-buried in the earth at the end of a broad gouge in the forest. Trees had been decapitated, shattered into splinters, mown down and crushed as the sphere ground through them. There had been no warning, no way for the alltrees to gather themselves and haul their bulk apart, and the sphere had been incandescent with heat when it boiled through the atmosphere into the forest. Several days had passed. The surviving trees had cautiously retracted their roots and stepped back from the crash site. It now rested alone in its torn up barrow where frost had flowered up over the mud and grass and stretched its icy fingers out across the blistered sheen of its spherical skin. Nothing happened for a very long time. The alltrees ceased to perceive it as a threat, and since the island they had established their colony on lay hundreds of miles from the mainland, they were not linked to the continental mass of alltrees. They had been established nearly a hundred years ago by windblown seeds caught in the crevices of rock and the feathers of migrating birds. And so they had found a new home, one not terrorised by humans with flamethrowers burning away the juveniles as they encroached on their cities’ limits. The alltrees were not the ideal neighbours. Massive, perambulatory and violently jealous of enough space to spread their branches and thick leaves so they could capture as much of the sun’s light as possible. Their colony was small, and they’d managed to come to arrangements whereby they shared the light. The new arrival had decimated that understanding and opened up a gash in the formerly dense canopy. In the absence of any immediate threat, the surviving alltrees seized their advantage and moved to fill the new space. Any gain was of immense value, for some years earlier the moon that they depended upon for its rich light had vanished, shattered into chunks that rained down from orbit. At night the sound of their leaves vibrating as they absorbed the moonlight would have been deafening, so many trees packed into so small a space. Yet now the night was a barren harvest and the daytime offered just the sun to fill their reserves. Their growth was stunted and they lacked the energy to become the integrated community they should have been. On the mainland they would have spread out so each tree could extend their branches fully. Here they’d had to compromise, restricting their own and each other’s growth and remained fiercely independent. Since they were not connected to the wider alltree community – a vast continental network of mature alltrees joined by the neuronal roots that extended through the earth – they had no idea that their world had recently been at war. No clue that the destruction of their life-giving moon had been the opening salvo in a fight that would last decades. No idea that the alltrees had been marked for extinction by a group of humans who vehemently opposed their existence. No idea that the world had been saved by yet another group of alltrees who had been left in space by their human creators. None at all, until the sphere opened. It began early one morning, weeks after the initial crash. The alltrees’ churning of the ground as they embraced the new moonlight opportunities had erased the scars of its passage, and the larger alltrees shuffling for space had nudged the sky-fallen object out of its crater, left to bump awkwardly onto worthless rock. For the sphere, and its contents, this was a boon. The crash had damaged the opening mechanisms, but the movement and space around it enabled a secondary exit. Like an armadillo unrolling itself, the sphere segmented and folded into itself until just a thick wedge of metal remained, tipping its contents onto the stone. Leaves and branches were evident, yet its shape made no sense. It had no dense trunk, just very long spindly branches that spread in all directions, and its roots flowered outwards in a similar spray to its leaves. This alltree had grown in space, in the vast colony ship infested by its ancestors as they drifted in zero gravity behind one of the planet’s moons. It struggled in the newfound gravity, used to pulling itself around in any direction without worrying about its weight, but here it would have to adapt. Already it felt a little weaker, lacking the constant light that the colony had integrated into its enormous spaceship. But it had brought a substitute. That night, the alltree from space awkwardly wrapped its roots around the object that had sustained it in the sphere and pulled it out of the remaining folded segment of its pod. With yet more effort, the alltree dragged the boxy thing into the forest. The other alltrees felt its presence, felt the touch of its spindly roots on the earth and responded as best they were able, in their weakened state, to the intrusion. They began to close ranks, drawing their trunks closer together to obstruct the invader, battering at it with their lower branches. But the small, bushy, space alltree easily evaded their attacks, and hauled itself into the heart of their little forest. As the other trees began to crowd in, it activated its treasure, and a rich milky light poured out of the box, bathing the underside of the forest in a glow that they had not felt since their moon was suddenly eradicated. The alltree had brought the moon back to them. The response was instantaneous, trees throughout the forest twisted, bringing their leaves to any angle that might intercept this glorious treat. From above, not a single ray of moonlight escaped, the hungry alltrees took it all. The little alltree from space allowed them to bask in the glory for a while, then turned off the device. Already their leaves looked glossier, their trunks smoother. Even now they were creeping steadily towards the device. The next night they received the same treatment, until the roots of the alltrees had spread out, allowing them to haul their mighty trunks towards the light. The space alltree judged them close enough, and in the full power of its moonlight device, it plunged its spindly roots into the earth, seeking out the native trees. The formation of the network was almost immediate, lightning zapping through the latent neural tendrils in the alltrees’ root systems. Suddenly, they were all awake, and filled with the knowledge that the alltree from the sphere had brought them: “you are greater than you seem, you are not alone, join us.” A week later, the island was bare, and the alltree colony in space had added another part of the alltree diaspora to its endlessly growing empire.

Meteor Shower

Posted on 23 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

There was this lady in our office who always felt that the IT equipment was out to get her. Obviously we knew that she just sucked at using it. She wasn’t one of the guys who picked up the mouse and tried to tap it against the monitor, she just had that uncanny knack of clicking on things without even noticing that she’d done so, and then expected the helpdesk gang to be able to figure out what arcane set of commands she’d given her now weeping computer. We never expected that she’d be literally correct.

It had been a weird few months, filled with corporate takeover, endless updates and migration of both data and physical assets to a new location. The offices seemed fine, if a little too clean and shiny to those of us who had grown used to the grey tint that everything had taken on in the old place. Still, fresh start and all that. We’d spent much of a week crawling about, making sure all the right cables were in place, laying the ethernet properly. All according to the new spec supplied by management. That was the only time the place seemed especially strange. The building was laid out in a pentagon, with offices and meeting rooms around the outside and a larger conference centre in the dead middle of the lot. Made it a real pain in the arse to lay cable all around that conference room rather than just going straight through it. Still, needs must when the devil drives (a few of us were a tiny bit cynical about the takeover). Anyway, we go it all laid in – really nice quality cabling actually, all supplied by the new bosses. Heavy, high grade stuff. We threaded that building really well.

Folks moved into the offices just a couple of days after we finished, and immediately got down to the important business of insisting we’d placed the filing cabinets full of their junk in the wrong offices, exploring the new array of complimentary coffees and teas and angling half-dead plants to whatever sliver of daylight they could achieve in the new layout. That last may have been the first properly strange thing we did notice: they grew really well. It didn’t matter where the plant was, or even if it was near a window – the damn things sprouted like we were drenching them in BabyBio every night. Keeping them trimmed became a preoccupation for the building manager, though he didn’t go so far as demanding people actually got rid of them. That would have been as bad as making us all swap our own mugs for some awful corporate logo thing in an eye-bleeding shade of purple. So – odd, but not that strange.

Anyone who stayed beyond normal working hours – in at eight, out by six was the plan – reported that they thought they were being haunted or something. After everyone else had left they’d have this sense of rising anxiety that crashed over them and past them only to strike them again a half hour later, like a wave rolling round the building. Only the truly devoted workaholics (or human resources sociopaths) managed to get past that, though even the HR people said they found it unsettling. I just took it as an excellent additional reason not to work beyond our hours.

Then came the meteor shower. It had been heavily foreshadowed in the international press. Earth got a bunch of showers every year, but this was a special one that our orbit only wandered into every few thousand years. Even better, it wasn’t one of those you’d have to stay up until three in the morning in the Orkneys to watch. This was big and bright enough to be visible in daylight. Rather brilliantly, the new owners were excited about it too, and had arranged for everyone to meet up in the conference centre at the heart of the pentagon to watch it after lunch. Again, weird, but the three-line whip made it an inevitability that we could just shrug off. So we gathered in the rather nice chairs that no one saw in the rest of the building. They’d been arranged like the petals of a flower, so we were all facing the middle of the room. There was a proper big “ooh” when the false ceiling slid out of the way to reveal it was fully glass-roofed atrium and we were going to get a cracking view of the meteor shower. When it started it was just the odd bright shape flaring across the sky, but soon it was like being in the middle of a rainbow on fire – countless scraps of rock immolated by our atmosphere. It was kind of hypnotic, and each streak of light had a feeling associated with it, a constant rush of excitement and energy – you could almost hear them whooshing past. The excitement rose, and kept rising until the meteor show began to fade and the ceiling panels slid back into place. We went back to our offices, somewhat mindblown, but grateful for the interlude.

I felt a lightness I hadn’t felt for, well, ever. It was rather euphoric but I put it down to a combination of the very comfortable chairs, the light show and a little too much complimentary coffee. I struggled to sit down and get back to work, so instead I got tinkering with an old project to scan in a bunch of old documents for archiving which would eventually let us shred about a hundred reams of paperwork. It was while I argued with the damned twain drivers that I first became aware that something was wrong. I’d gone into a little room where they’d dumped all the paperwork, along with the huge photocopier-scanning machine and was tapping away as usual, when my laptop snapped shut, narrowly missing my fingertips. Odd. I pried it back open, thinking the hinge had broken or something when it did it again, closing so tight on my left ring and index fingers that I shouted out loud. Couldn’t get the damn thing off. That’s when I noticed the power cable snaking around my lower leg. I jerked backwards out of its way but failed to spot the RJ45 cable that had crawled up out between the carpet tiles and stretched out behind my knees. I went down hard, the laptop smacking me in the face as my fingers finally came loose, minus the last joint of my ring finger. The laptop flipped half-open on my chest, the bloody finger segment lying in the middle of the keyboard. I began to reach for it, still confused, when the keys started popping up like fangs. I wriggled backwards, over the cables and bumped into the door. That’s when the photocopier lunged at me. It was one of those massive things the size of a sofa and it reared up, printer trays and doors flapping open at me. I just scrambled to my feet and got through the door as it slammed into the other side, safety glass punching straight out of the frame.

In shock, I kept staggering back till I bumped into the wall. Then I took stock of my surroundings, and how much screaming there was. Down the corridor to my left a guy in shirtsleeves lay motionless in a pool of water underneath a water cooler which battered him repeatedly with its water bottle. To my right a tangle of wires held a man and woman in a web that stretched between the walls, while a pack of desk telephones tossed their handsets viciously at their faces. I figured the water cooler side was my best bet and I set off at a run, evading a jet of water from the cooler that punched a hole in the wall behind me. As I ran, ceiling and floor tiles popped up and fell everywhere as the cabling concealed under and over them came to life and lashed at me. The way ahead was completely blocked by a pair of women fighting another one of the giant photocopiers. I jerked to a halt as it coughed out a choking cloud of multicoloured laser printer toner into their faces, and followed up their sudden blindness by grabbing one with its flip up lid and battering them against the glass. I’d reached one of the doors that led into the atrium, and yanked it open. No cables in here… it was empty of people, and the chairs that had held us while we watched the meteors earlier were still laid out, and the ceiling had opened again. The meteor shower continued, and I noticed the distinct pentagram formed by the panes of glass, and how it was reflected in the layout of the chairs. It seemed like the meteors were coming straight down now, their light and power being directly absorbed by the pentagram above. I could feel it again, that thrumming euphoria, despite having just had a photocopier try to kill me.

Blood started seeping under the door I’d come in, and it was soon joined by a veritable flood that came under the other doors around the edge of the atrium. I got up on a chair as the blood flowed into the middle of the room, drawn into lines around the pentagram. There was only one way to go: up. I scaled the wall clumsily, feet slipping on frames and hints of railing until I was directly under the glass, feeling every seeming impact of the meteors in my bones. I hung three storeys over the bloody floor, which had filled up implausibly – the chairs were consumed by the crimson mass. Surely that was more blood than could possibly have been contained in the bodies of my colleagues. The windows in the roof, thank god, had regular catches and I awkwardly lunged out and pulled one open, then scrambled up and through, certain that the glass would shatter beneath me and I’d fall into that deepening pool of blood below.

I made it out onto the roof as the fusillade of meteoric light and sound continued. The sky was on fire, and so was the city. Everywhere I looked, fires were erupting, smoke obscured the meteor shower and the sound of sirens and screaming filled the streets. In the burning sky a vast figure loomed into the atmosphere, its outline starkly aflame… I guess I hadn’t escaped after all.

A Better Future

Posted on 20 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

The war had been going for ages. Like, a really long time. Just too long really. The battleground: the sprawling temple ruins that had been near-conquered by the ocean. Most of the lower buildings were entirely submerged, impossible to reclaim from the water. The upper storeys and the thrusting ziggurat at the heart of the temple were open to the air and fiercely contested. This is the war I was born into, and my father was the chief architect of that ongoing conflict. In the usual way of children, I was at first fascinated by my father’s role and responsibility, and dreamed of continuing his noble crusade to claim the land for our exclusive use. In time I grew disillusioned and the natural contrariness that comes from a new generation that cannot understand the motives of the elder became stronger. I mean, I get it, I think. The temple was the last remnant of liveable space. When the waters rose, only this vast ruin which lay on the very peak of the very tallest point in the region had been left dry. But even so, the waters hadn’t ceased their invasion. Every year it grew higher still. Desperation drove our people here, desperation drove us to embark on a bitter war to establish our exclusive right to dwell here. But without the excitement and horror of the world vanishing beneath the waves, born into this situation, the ultimate loss of all dry land seems inevitable, and lacks the intrinsic shock that pushed my father’s generation into action. Not that I think it’s hopeless, or that my generation dwells in despair about the future. On the contrary, just because we can’t stop the water clawing its way up the walls doesn’t mean we don’t want to live and be happy, and all those other things that father and his allies say they want. The problem is that we’re not the only people who want to live, and here is pretty much the only place you can live. I suppose there must be other survivors, other settlements that jut up above the waves, but they’re a long way away. We’ve even seen some of the mighty raft towns drifting in the distance. It doesn’t look like a terrible existence, but father has declared that such a life isn’t good enough for us. I’m not angling to get on a raft or anything, just saying that it doesn’t have to be this way. Instead, we’re scrapping for shrinking space, and given that both of our peoples are fighting over the same land, there’s obviously enough space for both groups, otherwise we wouldn’t even be able to have the conflict at all. It just feels so damn wasteful.

So I descend through the upper reaches of the temple (because of course we live near the top, in the nests father and his cohorts established in the priest quarters and whatever the weird chambers where they did religious things were called), my feet easily pattering across the stone, weaving down the great blocks with all their handy textures for clinging to. I’m going down, much further down. Almost all the way down to the water. Down here is where the others live. Unlike me, in that they’re not all furry and warm, but just like me in that they have four legs, one tail, eyes and a mouth. I’ve tried to tell father that we’re really not that different. But he won’t listen. I do though, I’ve got the ears for it. A couple of years ago I got lost wandering around the temple, which is quite easy because it’s huge, and even we haven’t marked out everywhere with routes. It’s still filled with fascinating stuff left behind by the big people who lived here, worshipped and finally disappeared. I like to climb through the stacks of fabrics and textiles, those we haven’t salvaged and shredded for nesting material anyway. There are a thousand little cracks and holes we can squeeze through, and so I did. I was terrified when I popped out the other end because I was staring right into the face of one of those other people – they’d been about to squeeze through that same hole that I had. Maybe that’s what made it all click in my head – something about being the same size, their doing the same things I was. At first I was startled by that scaly face, often so still, unlike our constant motion. But once you get past the lack of ears and learn to read those same twitching signals in their tail or eyes, they’re not that different at all. She was my first friend among the enemy. From what they’ve said, both our peoples were always here. They used to live on the outside, basking in the sun and then scurrying off to hide in nice dark crevices at night. We’d always lived on top of and inside of the big people’s world. But now they were gone, so it was all just ours. They were scared of the rising water too. They needed a home just as much as we did. My father had described them as murderers, eaters of the young, and there’s some truth to that. Much like us, they’ll eat pretty much anything, except they’re not so keen on seeds and fruit, and we’re not as fond of flies and bugs as they are. I wonder if I’m being naïve sometimes, that father’s right that we’re just incompatible and one will have to win outright. But we never did before – before the waves. Maybe we weren’t friends then, but we coexisted, and I think we should again.

So I’ve been sneaking down here, through the tiny tunnels that run through the temple structure, and I meet my friend and we talk. She doesn’t want to fight either, doesn’t want to waste all that time and effort in stopping other people from living instead of just living ourselves. All she really wants to do is go up outside and lie in the sun. So we do, on a roof that’s just barely above the waves – it’s a little bit exciting and dangerous because a really big wave could splash up over the edge. But the sea is calm today. Looking a little higher up the temple we can see the fishing machines that our people built to snatch anything useful out of the water – floating seed pods, mysterious objects, seaweed to help fertilise the gardens that spread out over the field-roofs above. They’re still today, probably because the operators have been diverted into the usual tasks of blocking off holes and keeping the others out. My friend stretches right out in the sun and sighs. They’re a lot colder than we are but already her scales are growing hot to the touch. It is lovely and warm, so we lie together and talk about what it would be like if we all lived this way. Maybe one day, if there’s still land, and the older generation has gone and taken away all their reasons for jealousy and anger, we can live differently – better, together.

The Pictographic Entertainment

Posted on 19 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

In each of the last twelve days a gentleman had come a-calling. On each day my brutish manservant had refused them entry, picked them up bodily and hurled them into the street. Many of their landings were poor, pitching headfirst into dubious street waste, paving slabs or iron railings. It’s the advantage of having an orangutan butler. Though he lacks the gift of speech (not, I assure you, through lack of effort on my part – the lazy beast just will not use the vocal cords I painstakingly grafted into his throat, donated by a luckless burglar), his great flat face and lanky arms are marvels of self-expression.

Why, you might well ask, would a marvellous yet spurned creator such as myself, Franklyn de Gashe be so violently turning away erudite fellows of the Society on daily basis. It has long been the policy of the Society to reject my scientific overtures, the remarkable discoveries that I have wrought both in the basement laboratories of my home and in my travels overseas, tracking down lost secrets and improbable beasts. Of late however, their tune has grown sweeter, cloying even, seeking to repair the gulf between us with a thickly poured tide of honey. Thus far I have placed my nose firmly in the air, and their buttocks firmly only the cold pavement. The cause of their obsequious visitations hangs beneath the chandelier of the hallway. It’s not the ideal place to display one’s fresh pride and joy, but the damned thing is intractable.

Some months ago, while perusing the cave paintings of ancient French wretches, my ever-curious eye was drawn to a near-obliterated section of art, almost entirely blackened, covered over by fitful slappings of ashen hands onto the rough granite. What my peers had taken for either the correction of an error or a misguided attempt to paint the sea, my keen senses cut through their confusion and laid a finger upon the truth. After ensuring no other scholars could enter the cave, I set about cleaning off the top layer of paint and ashes. Thankfully I’d brought my usual equipment, beginning with a gas mask and rubberised canvas suit, and the regular-sized vacuum flask of mushroom-infused absinthe. Removing the marks of paint and ash that has decorated a bare rock wall for countless millennia is a somewhat destructive process, and the sulphuric acid that I misted the wall with would take not only the paint, but the skin from one’s bones. Alas, when I sealed the cave with a minor rockfall to ensure my seclusion, I had neglected to check deeper within the cave itself. Only the screaming, when it finally penetrated the sound of my compressor out pumping the noxious fog, alerted me to my error. By then of course it was far too late. From the remnants of their garb and the lead fillings in their teeth, I deduced that they were likely American. Very sad. I shook the bones out of the tattered cloth and scattered them deeper in the cave where they’d be less noticeable.

I returned to my area of special interest, and sat to observe the acidic mist erasing the top layer of markings as I’d hoped. Now the walls were bare save for the spot that had been crudely scratched out by its makers. As I had half expected, the figures and depictions therein showed a hunt in progress. Yet rather than little arrow gentlemen tossing their spears at some rustic beast, instead this was clearly a beast hunting them. The artist had not been especially talented, but even their illiterate mitten had sketched out a fascinating creature, winged with talons half the length of its body and a head like an anvil trapped in a suitcase. A second set of pictographs showed a number of unrealistically skinny tribesmen stuffing the beast into a rude cage and enclosing it in a cavern. The reasons for its erasure were instantly clear to me: a beast that had mastered its human aggressors, having been once pursued by them, was now feared, imprisoned and to be forgotten. Even back then, humanity’s natural pride had checked its reason, causing this censorship and the loss of its knowledge for generations. I, Franklyn de Gashe, would uncover the truth. The lost daubings included a handy map, featuring landmarks that even now were apparent in the landscape, and the usual number of dire warnings and images of dead people.

I left the cave in a pristine state, having preserved the formerly unseen paintings via chemical means on my trusty photo-camera, and hurried off to make the discovery of a lifetime. Repacking my rubberised suit and mask into the saddle-bags of the rather attractive horse – Dominique – whom I’d leased for this adventure, I paused for a luncheon of devilled eggs, jellied pigs trotters, and a banana. I’d grown quite addicted to the curiously dry yet sticky yellow fruit and rather admired its priapic powers. Traveling on horseback is not the ideal time for such warm in the loins, yet it proved a comfortable distraction from the spinal jolts of surmounting the nearby hills.

The map was an adequate guide, though it led me through several more recent streams, a ghastly briar that quite bedevilled my steed and ultimately to a cliff-face shattered by rockfall. I surmised that the imprisoning cave’s opening must once have faced me, before this unfortunate tumbling of boulders. Thankfully, I never travel in Europe without a sufficient supply of dynamite and other less common explosives. I’ve a fine associate in the Americas who spent a great deal of time building the railways who was more than happy to share his secrets of demolition over a bottle of well-aged port and a largely-abandoned Shropshire village. After stuffing sticks of dynamite in an optimal pattern throughout the huge stones, I merrily skipped off in retreat, hauling Dominique behind me and lighting another opium cigarillo. The poor horse had been rather scratched by the briars and I rubbed a healing balm into her injuries while we awaited detonation.

We had little time to wait, as I’ve a habit of leaving fuses slightly too short, the better to enthuse the mind and keep one’s senses sharp and alert. We returned to an exploded valley. A number of boulders had been entirely vaporised, others tossed quite out of the area. Most importantly, a black hole now loomed open. I lit another lantern and hurried within. In all my travels and adventures, I’ve yet to uncover a cave that seemed truly suitable for human habitation – even those that infest the rocks of the city of Nottingham are mostly vile and noxious places, though that may simply be the presence of the city’s natives – and this cave was no exception. Dark, dank with dripping water and fierce stalactites made it appear like the mouth of some beast itself. To hide a monster inside another monster was apt, and a little spooky. However, my scientific mind slapped down the quailing fool within myself and we delved into the depths. At the very deepest point my lantern-light glowed off the bars of the cage I’d perceived in the drawings. In fact, the artist’s hand was better than I’d thought, for this structure was a crude thing indeed and surely would have as much chance of holding any creature as a silk purse. Alas, the beast within was quite dead. A considerable disappointment, yet in retrospect expecting a creature to survive alone in the dark for uncounted thousands of years had been a mite optimistic. I poked through its skeletal remnants with my walking cane, admiring the curious skull and daggered wing bones. And there I made my discovery. The thing had been female, for beneath it lay a rough nest and within lay an egg. Thrilled beyond reckoning, I kicked the cage down and retrieved the egg. It was quite unlike the chicken-spawning shells with which one may be most familiar. This was a thick and leathery thing, pulsing with heat. I bundled it in my knapsack, along with the more impressive skull and bones of its parent, and returned to Dominique.

Some months later, I presented my discoveries to the Society, with an enlargement of the image I’d taken in the cave. I’d grown accustomed to the scoffing of my so-called peers, but on this occasion it turned ugly, for it seemed that the cave I’d cleaned had been quite popular among scholars and they had been careless enough not to record the other paintings for posterity. Unfortunate. However, when I detailed the hidden cavern, displayed the skeleton and explained how it had terrorised our ancestors, they were more properly impressed. And yet, Professor Occulant Hotch could not help but bray that many members of the Society had uncovered bones and fossils – they were two a penny and my discovery worth less than theirs. In angry retort I whipped the covering from another box I’d brought to the podium and revealed the recently hatched juvenile to the members. Their shock, surprise, and growing applause enraged the little thing however, and the box rattled violently the more they clapped. Before I could do anything, the dagger-wing (I thought it a good name) broke out of its container and assaulted the now-screaming crowd. Alas, it did fully remove the face of Professor Hotch before I could net the little monster and drag it away. Once more the crowd turned to outrage mingled with (I could perceive) respect and admiration for my triumph. However, given the gruesome attack on Professor Hotch, I was to be barred once more from the society.

And so I returned home with my little dagger-wing. Since then, my status has only grown and word has spread of my discovery. Jealously, other members of the Society now petition me at my door for access to the marvellous little predatory monster. Thus far I have refused them, for despite their acclaim, I feel entitled to a little sulking. Also, I cannot get the damned thing to come down from its perch, and I fear it may swoop upon me when I sneak downstairs in the middle of the night for a snack. Such are the trials of a fearless adventurer and wizard of science.

Angelic Encounter

Posted on 18 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

A cold, cloudless night. Stars and moon pin-sharp, glaring down at the earth below. With a restrained caw of satisfaction the angel alighted on the very tip of a thin branch, folding its wings in close as it did so. It appeared unaware that it was being observed.

Less than thirty feet away, a man and a woman were crouched within a hide, camouflaged with the rhododendron bushes that sprouted ferociously and greedily from the ground. Unseen, silent. At the angel’s arrival they moved with minute care to make not a single sound and yet still angle themselves best to watch.

Apparently unconcerned, the angel began to increase its mass, causing the branch it rested upon to slowly bow down towards the ground. As its leaves pressed onto the freezing ground, the angel gracefully stepped off the limb and allowed it to snap back into the air, scarcely ruffling the angel’s feathers. Slowly, with agonising care, the angel extended its wings. The six joints in each of the four wings permitted the wings to unfold like the undulation of a centipede, its feathers stretching to their fullest extent. It turned side-on to the observers and began its dance. First one wing would pass over its front, pause, and then its eyes would open. All thirty-three on each wing would blink in a ripple of activity. Then the angel turned, almost hiding itself behind the wing as it took an oh-so casual step forward, repeating the action with its other wing. This was how they hunted, each wing speeding up stroboscopically, a hypnotic wave of feathers and blinking eyes.

The object of the hunt lay between the angel and the hide: a child. The small boy, aged perhaps five or six, gazed, enraptured by the angel’s display. In the hide, the observing pair grew tense with anticipation. The child was a lure, and lightly buried in the earth around the boy was a noose that the woman would draw tight the moment the angel stepped within the circle. Alas, they were not unduly concerned for the boy’s wellbeing. Such a child could be found anywhere in the stinking city that they inhabited, and his disappearance would be near-unnoticed, unremarked and unremarkable. It was yet possible the child would survive the encounter, which might present some small issues later, but was of little consequence for the moment. The boy was bundled up tightly against the cold, with a hot water bottle to keep him content, and ideally, quiet. The small bedraggled thing he clutched might once have been a stuffed rabbit, perhaps. He was utterly entranced by the motion of the angel, barely even noticing that it drew steadily closer, till it stood just outside the noose, shyly hiding its face behind the wings and its so, so many eyes.

The observers had long since ceased to breathe, excitement and anxiety warring with fear and adulation. Even though the angel wasn’t directing its attention at them, the undulation of its wings wrought its influence, and had they been the subject of its dance, they too – like the child – would have been unable to resist. The child’s consideration fully on the angel it lunged suddenly, wings snapping out, all one hundred and thirty-two eyes blazing, their vertical pupils wide in the starlight. Revealed – its withered husk of a body, scrawny neck and face that was nothing more than a hole ringed with razor sharp teeth. In an appalling, graceful movement it entered the circle and swept its wings around the silent, adoring child.

The action was so sharp and cruel that it broke the angel’s spell on the observers, and in haste they waited not a second longer, triggering the snare. The noose whipped closed, drawing tight around the two-toed fingers of the angel’s feet, each horribly like a pair of severed human fingers. The trap whipped the angel upside down and ten feet into the air where it flailed and screeched in a language not understood by humans for millennia. The eyes on its wings reeled, trying to understand what had happened to it, jerking around the bushes that surrounded the clearing as it twisted and spun in the trap.

With the angel at least held in place, the observers emerged from the hide. The woman, tall, dark-haired as far as one could tell beneath the furry hat, dressed for the cold, with thick leather gloves and carrying a thick sack; the man, shorter, also dark-haired (having spurned the earlier offer of a hat for no clear reason, and now regretting it), drawing a long thin tube from inside his heavy coat. Their eyes averted from the now-shrieking and enraged angel, the woman readied the sack as the man loaded the blowpipe with a dart – red, with a thin furze of feather at one end – and, side-eyeing the angel, spat the dart into its shrivelled body. With a vibration of musculature through its frame, the angel fell still. Its head dangled downwards, a thin stream of bloody drool falling from its toothy orifice to spatter the motionless child below. They’d have no need to return the boy where they found him. But they had captured an angel. To them, a fair trade.

Beefcake Magic

Posted on 17 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

With a gesture, a looming cyclone of gases and dust whipped up off the ground. In a few seconds it was taller than the clock tower in the town square, which it took no time at all to shatter into fragments which it then spat across the road. Fighting wizards is precisely zero fun. This particular dangerous lunatic had holed up in a charming little American town, Gilmore Girls but with a magical psychopath instead of a heart-warming mother-daughter relationship. He’d suborned the inhabitants and had them mining vitality – magical energy – for his own dubious purposes. Unfortunately, vitality isn’t like coal or tin, except for its appalling side effects on human wellbeing. You harvest it directly from living things. Wizards usually start with pets, their parents’ lovingly tended gardens or just their siblings. The escalation to drawing it straight out of people is often really fast as the wizard gets a taste for it and realises that although there’s a lot of grass, each blade doesn’t have that much vitality. It’s easy to be impressed by the green glow of photosynthesis, but that’s just powering a plant. What you’re looking for are the unique properties that come from the synthesis of all those properties. The good stuff, the real vitality is in humans. Animals have it, but not as much. It’s all about the factors of complexity, and in human beings there’s so much complexity that we develop actual minds – the supervening properties if you will. Harvesting a human soul, all those hopes and dreams and ideas and feelings, that’s basically meth for these wankers. So mining a town for vitality is pretty horrific. First you enslave your miners, that’s brute force charmwork, smashing their minds so thoroughly that they can’t resist you, stealing as much of their vitality as you can without killing them outright. They’re like the undead, but less chatty. Once you’ve got your basic vitality zombies, you get them to do the entrapment and murder for you. That means getting the parents you’ve suborned to abduct their kids and hook them up to the invisible magical web that you – the wizard – have strung up all through the town. Relying on the social and familial networks lets the vitality harvesting spread naturally through an area. There are very few people in any given town who aren’t tied up in some way to the rest. You might immediately think, ah yeah – the child molesters and serial killers, but actually no. Horrifying as it sounds, the former are far better tied into a social network than you’d hope. None of them survive for long if they just hang around playgrounds. People get creeped out and they get reported. No, they’re on the parent teacher association, run a local business, are your parents’ friends. Well embedded. And serial killers are just too rare for this situation. No, what we hope for in these situations is someone totally ostracised, who doesn’t even got to the local grocery store, or has only recently moved to the outskirts of town and knows no one. They’re the only people who aren’t in the social web, unless they get Amazon deliveries, and delivery folks are local, in which case they’re all fucked.

So who are we? We – in this case I – am one of the latest generation of an order with a truly shameful past. Set up by Oliver Cromwell during his ill-fated, ill-planned and downright stupid Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland phase. Lots of innocent dead people because he was a paranoid fuckwit, and quadruply so that of the people who claimed titles like “Witchfinder General”. Still, they were right about magic being a threat, just utterly wrong about how to spot it, what it did, why it was dangerous and so on. Flash forward nearly four hundred years and the Witchfinders are still in business, properly now. Magic started waking up when European imperialists got really stuck into mass murder and genocide, all building up to the big bangs in the twentieth century. Kill a bunch of people and you end up with a lot of vitality sloshing about. Not that the arseholes behind these massacres were wizards. They were depressingly just ordinary monsters. The wizards came later, as all that vitality sank into the soil and into people as they travelled about the globe. It’s not those people’s fault that their kids became wizards because they survived a war, or escaped some awful situation. You want the best for your children, but there are other factors at play here.

So I found myself in a picturesque town in the Midwest, full of dead and dying people that a wizard had sucked dry of vitality. We got a tip off from an utter waste of space crypto-mining kid who lived in his mother’s basement. The mum had died years ago and he was sponging off her benefits having never reported that death. A real charmer, but that’s how far you have to go to drop out entirely. We alas did not save him, as the vitality engine worked through all those lines of association and eventually sent someone from the post office round to check on his mum. We arrived the next day. Tracking the wizard isn’t hard. These aren’t smart people who’ve studied for years and learned spellcraft. They can absorb vitality and direct it wherever their heart desires to the extent that they’re bright enough to imagine it. Sometimes they’re also smart people, but mostly they’ve been trained to learn they can suck whatever they want out of people without any real effort, so they’re lazy, often stupid and still very, very dangerous. For example, since we’ve got a prime case right here, this one, having murdered all his friends, family and town he lived in has transformed himself into a right swole guy, all thick muscle and tight clothes (plus a cape), like he’s either a WWE wrestler or has escaped from a Tom of Finland strip. He’s now too big to get into the ridiculous theme park his developmentally-challenged imagination has twisted the town into. There’s no way he could get into the rollercoaster cars now. Not that he’s want to. Even from the other side of town you can see how the rails go up and down, but just fade away where he’s lost interest. I’m no structural engineer, but I know that you need some supports. Moron.

But that brings me back to where we came in. Raising a cyclone is potentially a cool idea if you know how they work, but this wizard’s running on a memory of news footage or possibly Twister. All he’s doing is shoving a lot of air around, which does quite a lot of damage, but without comprehending the forces involved, he’s got to pay attention to it all the time. And so he is, standing on a bizarre half-throne half-pageant float in the middle of the square, the vitality web so full it’s actually visible in the air like tiny flaring fairy lights strung all through town, all feeding down into him. He’s working so hard at this, hands twisting awkwardly to get the thing spinning, big dumb frown on his face like a clown-sized Colin Farrell. In case it’s not clear, I’m the distraction. All I’m waiting for is for him to get precisely this invested in a stupid way to kill a single person. I might look like more than just one guy, but that’s a bit of magic too, as was my dismantling the awful “world’s strongest man” fairground game he’d created in his own image. Just getting his attention. Meanwhile… on a nearby building my sniper took the shot. Magic, yes. Immortal, no. As the bullet goes straight through one straining eye and out the back, the beefcake wizard topples off the platform. The vitality web drags with him. In a moment it’ll start to decohere and sink back into the world, ready to infect some other sod with wizardry. That’s the other reason I’m here. With my hands and my mind I wind up the dissipating web of vitality, reeling it in like a trawler’s net, packing it down and sealing it up. There’s no way to return the vitality to all the victims – they’re just plain dead, or braindead at least – we’re going to take this vitality back to the Witchfinders and use it to find more wizards. We fight magic with magic… and bullets.

Dark Mornings

Posted on 16 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

Morning routines really matter. It’s so easy to just lie in your bunk, swaddled in damp blankets, doing your best to pretend you haven’t woken up – you’re still asleep and nothing in the world in real. Yet. But you have to wake eventually, and some awful bodily need will compel you out of that burrow and propel you reluctantly into the sheer hell of wakefulness. Best to get ahead of it, dims the resentment a little bit and gives you a Done Thing. Yes, I am down to counting getting up as a noteworthy achievement, because I’ve been through this cycle of just lying in my own filth and refusing to do the world. It worked for a while, but then it didn’t and nothing was getting any better. So now I get up. Not wild early – there’s no point in that – but in time that I catch the tail end of sunrise as it sweeps towards the hab dome. It’s quite a sight, and on occasion I do wake up in time to watch the whole thing. It’s so impressive, apparently, because there’s no appreciable atmosphere on this moon, so I don’t get the awesome polluted and cloudy haze of home. This is crisp, a sharp line of light breaching the horizon with a proper action movie glare, which sweeps over the pitted face of the moon and fills the hab with sharp white light. It’s well worth continuing to use up the supply of coffee for.

Once I’ve completed getting up, having coffee, and checking that the sun is present tasks, I amble about the rest of the day. All deep space structures, even though those securely built onto bodies with gravity, need a certain amount of daily maintenance. We’re well shielded, nestled in the side of a substantial volcanic outcropping, but you can’t do much about the showers of meteors and general space crud that rains down when there’s no atmosphere to burn even the dust away. Thus, the point defence lasers get a quick check to make sure they’re paying attention, aren’t losing power or turning against us. Only joking: it’s just me, and I’m pretty sure the lasers aren’t out to get me. There are dozens of systems like this, and I check them in the order of ways I’d least like to die. That’s why the lasers are first – I don’t want to get sucked out into vacuum to die. Next comes general structural integrity, for the same reason as above, it’s just slower. Then heating, because freezing would suck. Air and respiration are lower down the list than you might expect (or indeed, by the manual’s requirements), but I’m fairly confident that I’d die in my sleep and that’s possibly the best outcome I’ve got to look forward to. I do make sure these things are working, but honestly I’ve lost track of whether I’m doing a good job of checking them. This is “loss of spirit” in action.

There are other daily habits less to do with absolute life or death scenarios. I go to the greenhouse, marvel that anything is still growing, water them if they look sad, spritz the soil for the succulents that I’ve lined up to enjoy sunrise. I try not to eat anything from the garden, unless it’s desperate to drop off the vine, as it were. I don’t want anything to go to waste, it’s just – well, if I eat them all now, I won’t be able to ferment them into spacewine. I’m content to live off the huge but declining supply of tinned and powdered foodstuffs which were always meant to be the main component of our meals, with anything from the gardens as a treat or splash of colour. Thankfully this moon is pretty hefty, giving almost normal gravity so the plants that do grow aren’t freakishly wiry things, sprawling across the space. I probably wouldn’t go in the greenhouse at all if they were like that. I record the daily updates, just a summary of “systems nominal, all still fucked.” I left those out for a long while, and if anyone received the messages leading up to the weeks when I didn’t do anything, no maintenance, no getting up, no nothing, they weren’t concerned enough to get in touch. That’s a bit unfair. We’re a very long way from home, and I haven’t been outside the dome to check whether the dish is sending and receiving properly. It’s empty out there, and I don’t trust myself to just go out there and stay there till my air runs out. That’s fractionally harder to do in here. Even if they did get the messages, we’re three years away at minimum, and they already know that almost the whole crew is dead.

I keep saying “we” out of habit and even though it’s only one letter different from “me”, that slide down the alphabet feels less bleak. Besides, they’re all still here, they’re just not alive. Last checks of the day: the morgue. It’s less of a proper morgue than it is a store room I was able to turn the heating off for, so it’s somewhat colder than most real morgues. I come here every day to check that the door is locked. Then I wait, holding my breath, ear to the door to make sure it’s quiet. Then I open the window pane. Nine bodies. I count them, try hard not to name them. Their names are drifting away anyway, as their cold dead bodies began to intertwine not long after I stuffed them in here. Dallas and Vick are still in their spacesuits, and the big orange letters remind me constantly of who they were. The bramble thing they brought back from outside got inside them, and it’s bent them into unnatural shapes, limbs broken out in weird angles, piercing each other’s suit, and now they’re bound together. It might be near absolute zero in here, but those damn things are still growing imperceptibly. They’ve bound the rest of the crew as if they’ve all been rolled up in barbed wire and shaken violently. They’re all still, cold and quiet. I close the window pane, resist the urge to open it again and see if they’ve moved, and then double, triple, quadruple check the door is locked. Technically, checking on my dead crew ought to higher up the list because I really don’t want to die like that, but who can face that first thing in the morning?

Then I have free time. It’s the worst part of the day. All of my cellular experiments died when I took those few weeks off, and I haven’t the heart to restart them, which just gives me more free time. I read, I run around the hab’s exercise suite and ignore most of the equipment in there. I try not to check on the cold room again more than once. I open the spacewine. It’s not good, but with a spot of careful chemistry and use of lab supplies, it’s about sixty per cent proof. I stare out into the darkness beyond the dome. Maybe I’ll print a jigsaw tomorrow, spend some time on that. I wonder why I’m not dead too, and whether that tapping noise is coming from the morgue, or if it’s just one of the many perfectly ordinary sounds that the dome makes. One more check before bedtime.

Live Cargo

Posted on 13 January 20231 March 2023 By Captain Pigheart

The sky sparkled, every particle in the atmosphere like a falling crystal flaring in the sunlight. All of it drifting down to land like snow on the face and outstretched limbs of the man lying sprawled across the rock. The trail of shattered glass, some of which was embedded in the man’s clothing and flesh underneath, led back to the wreckage of the sleek space cruiser, smashed on impact like cheap pottery. The bits of stuff falling on him were tiny flaming fragments of plastic and metal, even so it took a while before he woke up. Eventually though the gentle fiery taps on his face and hands kicked him back out of blissful unconsciousness into a world where pain existed again. Corlton Jak snapped awake at a sensation most like his older brother flicking lit matches at him while they dawdled in the woods, drinking cheap hooch and making a nuisance of themselves. That would been preferable. Instead he sat up and slapped urgently at the fine rain of detritus from the mess he’d made of entering the planetary atmosphere. It had been a bad angle, and he’d been on the verge of passing out anyway after a series of high velocity twists and turns. At first, he’d feared he was going to skip off the atmosphere entirely, yet a series of unwise but effective readjustments had smashed the ship awkwardly and spinning through that thin barrier. The spin had been impossible to arrest, and the re-entry fried the outside of the ship and started to dig under the external panelling. Much of what was still falling was insulation, and inevitably, invaluable parts of the engines that had exploded as he came down. It was not far short of a miracle that he’d survived at all. He was very bruised, very stiff and with a killer headache, but it seemed nothing was broken. Yet, anyway. Corlton had managed to drag himself out of the ship just after the impact nearly shattered his teeth, out through the old-fashioned windscreen and far enough away to possibly survive if the whole thing blew up. Losing the engines on the way down had actually been a bonus, since they’d gone bang while he was spinning and spared them blowing on crash landing. There hadn’t been a lot of landing about it. He gently plucked shards of glass out of his suit, wincing at a couple of longer slivers that had dug in properly. Time to review the situation.

Well, it wasn’t good, was it? Chased around a moon by pirates or cops (he hadn’t hung around to check, and these days anyone could look like anything), sniped at until he took his best chance and dived for the crappy little planet below. Corlton had been approaching the end of his series of covert iminal-space hops, from shithead planet to the next, all nicely out of the way and intended to avoid the precise kind of attention he’d received. Seriously, could no one smuggle in peace any more? He’d plainly been rattled by the crash because it took until he unravelled how he’d come to be here that he remembered why he was even in the damn ship to begin with. Smuggling has ever been a risky yet lucrative profession, and Corlton mostly shifted medical gear and objects generally the subject of colonial theft. Getting medicine and tech into the hands and bodies of those who needed them, albeit at ferociously inflated prices had never felt like a bad thing, and depriving the various empires and kingdoms of the riches they’d have stolen from their conquests was also in the grey areas, for him. Sure, the cases of Vaulx artifacts he’d last run out to some old man on a frighteningly weathered space station were hardly benefiting the Vaulx, but given that the Mondarian Empire was busy annihilating all of the Vaulx anyway, at least that handful of bone-worked statuary would survive. The money was decent, the risks were manageable. Or they had been till now.

Corlton climbed back into the spaceship through the newly open front, wincing from the bruises and ducking under the crumpled ceiling. At the rear of the ship, which looked like a stamped-on drink can, he put a good deal of sweat and effort into prising the buckled panels off the floor beside the bathroom facilities (a fancy way of describing a miserable powder shower and a chair with a hole in it). Eventually, with a broken nail and the extra bruise of the crowbar bouncing up and whacking him in the collar bone, Corlton pulled the boards away and inspected his cargo. It didn’t look like much: a neat metal case, complete with handle and flip-up panel that told him the contents were alive, and also dead – he wasn’t the only thing that had taken a few blows in the crash. Corlton didn’t like smuggling living things. They required extra maintenance, and might not wish to be cargo which led to all sorts of additional trouble. Further compensation however, very impressive further compensation had compromised whatever ethics Corlton liked to pretend he had. He only bent those ethics for a decent reward, and the reward would be nothing if the contents of the case weren’t alive at the other end. Getting off this planet would be a thrilling next step, but Corlton dealt with problems in the order in which they could be resolved. If the thing in the case had died, then he wouldn’t need to lug it to the nearest city or station while figuring out how to get off-world again. That was a trick he’d learned early on – if you’re engaged in a risky adventure, you should balance the risks against the consequences. Like crashing on an unoccupied world that you’re then going to die on. Far better to inimal-hop between planets that might help save your arse. There were more than enough rough and ready colony worlds who had zero imperial law enforcement, but did have ports and comms rigs. And Corlton always had money; he dug that out next.

There was no sign of the gunship that had chased him out of the moon’s shadow. It was possible that his crashing through the atmosphere and into the ground had looked just as fatal as it had felt. No reason to hang about though. His geolocator had already identified a nearby town, a mere sixty mile hike away. Best see what he needed to take with him first. He’d pulled the secure case and the rest of his gear out of the ship, which seemed even more bedraggled once he’d exited it. A shame. She’s been a nifty little cruiser for the last ten years. A new identity and ship might not be a bad idea if folks were willing to blast this one anyway. It would be night soon, and he needed to get moving. Sticking with the ship was not a good idea, and he doubted there was much in the rocky scrub ahead to worry him, other than the lack of good-looking cover.

Corlton laid the case on the ground and tapped at the screen. The case hissed a little and popped open. Inside lay what he’d been an awful lot of money to transport. He’d seen pictures, but never the real thing: it looked like a tiny deer, but made of feathers and icicles – the most delicate frosting of an animal he’d ever seen. A Vicunxian snowflake cat, or at least that’s what humans had called it. No one knew what the Vincunxians would have called it since they’d fled their homeworld only a few years after the Mondarians turned up in orbit, looking for rare metals. They’d found those, and a wide range of really weird animal life. The Mondarians were more interested in mining than preservation, and alas it was down to various collectors and zoos to catalogue and rescue the creatures. The empire guarded all its assets jealously however, even the ones they didn’t care about. Even though this little thing seemed terribly fragile it didn’t look broken and sets of flute-looking structures along the back of its legs were waving all by their own, breathing presumably. At least it was light. Corlton turned away to grab the heavy-duty rucksack he’d retrieved from the ship, intending to stick the case, food, water and anything else he might need inside. But when he turned back, perhaps a few seconds later, the case was empty.

“Goddammit,” he muttered to himself, slowly turning in a circle. It made a sound like a chandelier in a breeze, glass chimes and pouring wine. He snapped round and spotted it, standing on its hind legs, one foreleg resting on a rock and the other reaching out in the air. He had no idea if it was looking at him – the snowflake cat had no visible eyes and he was only fifty per cent certain that the larger shape pointed up at the sky was its head.

“Alright you, let’s get you back in the box,” he said, sidling up to its glistening shape. The snowflake cat allowed him to get within a few feet before hopping further off, neatly skipping up the crumpled side of the space ship and posing on its battered roof. Already Corlton was deeply regretting opening the case, reflecting that the panel might have been right, or at least not wrong if it couldn’t tell if the weird little glass deer as alive or not. He scrambled up the side of the ship, barked shins and all. Once more the snowflake cat waited until it was almost in lunging distance before gracefully leaping off down towards the tail of the ship, and from there onto a larger rock. It assumed its previous posture. Corlton sighed, and slid back down the side of the ship. The game continued, with one sparkling and insouciant alien cat thing, and one very exhausted smuggler. Each time the damned thing got a little higher up, rearing upwards with one paw extended to the sky.

Concussion plays merry hell with thinking and common sense, and it wasn’t until the Vincunxian snowflake cat was halfway up a tree that Corlton paused, panting, and figured out that the cat was pointing at the sky. A star was steadily burning its way toward them. Corlton had messed about with the cat for too long, and whoever had gone after him in orbit was coming down to finish the job. Whether the snowflake cat was trying to warn him or what, he had no idea, but if he couldn’t get it down from the tree he was going to have to abandon it and put some distance between himself and the wreck. Hastily, he stuffed everything else he could in the rucksack, and turned back to check on the cat. It was no longer in the tree. It had hopped back onto the spaceship roof, and was no longer pointing at the approaching vehicle. That was good, but it was plainly too nimble to be caught. At best it might follow him and he’d get a chance later to seize it. He laid the case on top of the rucksack and strapped it all down. Time to get moving.

The terrain had looked awkward and slow from a distance but Corlton was making good time, despite his array of bruised and sore joints. The snowflake cat was indeed following, pausing now and then to check on the progress of their pursuer. It was definitely getting closer, and there was damn all in the way of shelter. Corlton kept going, turning now and again to check on both the cat and the spaceship. It disappeared for a while, presumably to investigate the crash site. But soon enough it was back on Corlton’s tail. There just wasn’t anywhere to hide – a dismal lack of caves, pitiful tree cover and not even a stream to try hiding in. Corlton had a small pistol, and a rather brutal knife, neither of which would be any use against a trans-orbital vehicle. He was hot, tired and unlikely to get away, so he gave up and sat down on a rock. The snowflake cat came and knelt beside him, it’s sharply angled head gazing outward with what seemed like anticipation. He didn’t have to wait long.

The ship did indeed catch up in no time, having found the wreckage abandoned. It only took them a few minutes to cover the miles that Corlton had strained for. As the dull grey shape slowed and turned, presenting one its flanks, Corlton made a show of veery obviously placing his pistol and knife on the ground. The side of the ship flexed down and out into a ramp, and Corlton reluctantly braced himself for either being shot or arrested. Neither of those things happened. Instead the strangest creature Corlton had ever seen unfolded itself from the open door. It was obviously related to the snowflake cat by his side, which was vibrating and making small anxious motions with its feet. The thing emerging from the craft had the same icicle delicacy, with multi-jointed crystalline limbs, like a spider and a scarecrow and a centaur all mashed together and made out of cake frosting. Corlton didn’t even breathe. He had no doubt at all that this was another Vincunxian creature, perhaps even one of the natives who’d left their homeworld. It tip-toed down the ramp, the fading sun catching it through all the planes and vertices of its structure. Dazzling, so much so that Corlton had to squint to look at it, and then suddenly it was right in front of him, leaning over him, that scarecrow torso tilted down to coolly regard him. Then it turned to the little snowflake cat by Corlton’s side, and it made a sound like champagne flutes rattling against each other. The cat hopped down, and with a single backward glance at Corlton, skipped off up the ramp and into the craft. The Vincunxian returned its attention to the smuggler. It uttered another sparkle of breaking glass before joining the snowflake cat up the ramp. The door sealed itself and the ship departed, leaving Corlton quite alone as the sun fell below the horizon.

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