The Year’s Best Military SF & Space Opera

by David Afsharirad

  “Okay. Did you find me a second glove?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I have a complete outfit, in a crate under my bed. It’s even sort of black, sort of.”

  “Okay. One more question,” Luc says. “Do you know anything about setting explosives?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Would you like to learn?”

  Sasha nods, slowly.

  10.

  WHO WAS DARK SHARD? Was Dark Shard even a person? Did different people take turns wearing that costume? Luc spent all this time thinking of Dark Shard as his nemesis, but he knew nothing about him. Luc is slowly letting go of the idea that Dark Shard might have made the trip to Newfoundland, because the more he sees of the local drug dealers, the less they resemble Dark Shard’s crew. He’s never going to get perfect closure, no matter what happens. This isn’t even about him.

  Somehow, realizing this makes Luc feel lighter, even as his improvised Palm Strike uniform is weighing him down. He has a tough time conjuring the menace of Palm Strike with a tween girl on his heels chattering loudly about righting the colony’s wrongs.

  “Listen,” Palm Strike tells Sasha. “When we get to the drug lab, I’m going to need you to hang back, okay? You to see what happens next, that’s fine—but don’t get in harm’s way. I can’t be hurt, not really, but you can.”

  “I’m going to get hurt, one way or the other, if we don’t fix this. I chose to come along and help. We’re in this together.”

  “Yeah. Just, I don’t know, be careful. Your mom would kill me.”

  Upriver from town, where the water is still relatively clean, a red building houses an industrial laundry facility. A dozen people with guns and machetes are guarding it in the middle of the night.

  Palm Strike signals for Sasha to take cover, and uses the river to mask his footsteps, sloshing only slightly as he wades upstream. Then he climbs a jagged rock, leaps, and catches the edge of the building’s roof with one hand. Moments later, he drops off the other side and lands on top of the man with the biggest gun. After that, it’s one big knife fight in close quarters, with Palm Strike using the high gravity to his advantage for a change, staying low and letting his opponents overbalance. He brings his forearm down onto one man’s neck, while headbutting the woman who’s trying to choke him. Gently. No life-threatening injuries. He executes one move straight out of Rene’s high-gravity dance routine, but there’s no time to dwell on the past.

  In the midst of the fracas, Palm Strike keeps moving, heading for the door they were guarding, which leads to a basement.

  In the basement, there’s a giant vat of ochre sludge, surrounded by people wearing masks and smocks. They’re all shooting at him. He’s finally starting to like this planet.

  11.

  Becky Hoffman is still asleep when Palm Strike comes through her bedroom window. The tableau is so reminiscent of Dark Shard visiting Luc’s bedroom that he has to shudder. He gets out of the way long enough to let Sasha slip in behind him. Hoffman sits up in bed and stifles a gasp when she sees his dark shape looming over her bed. “Deveaux?” she says. “What the hell are you—”

  “I solved the food problem,” he growls. “There are billions of tiny mites that live in the soil around those trees, the ones you destroyed with your terraforming procedures. They eliminate the toxins and acidity from the soil. They’ll have to be reintroduced to your growing areas, which will be a slow painful process. In the mean time, though, the bugs themselves are high in protein, renewable, and easy to transport.”

  “That’s great news.” She blinks. “Why didn’t you just come to my office in a few hours to tell me?”

  “Because three people tried to kill me tonight. I couldn’t figure out what secret was so important they’d be willing to kill to protect it. Everybody knew they were trading drugs for food, so that couldn’t be it. And meanwhile, I still couldn’t work out where they were putting the food they collected from the addicts. Until I finally realized: there was only one place on the drug dealers’ route at the end of the night that they could be leaving the food. The colony’s food dispensary. Where it came from in the first place. And that led me to you.”

  “It’s a perfect system.” Misery displaces Hoffman’s last traces of sleepiness. “We hand out the same food rations, over and over.”

  “That’s insane,” Sasha says, from the foot of Hoffman’s bed, where she’s standing. Hoffman startles, noticing the girl for the first time.

  “We would have run out of food by now,” Becky Hoffman says to Luc. “We would all have starved.”

  “Don’t explain to me,” Palm Strike snarls. “Explain to her.” He jerks a gloved hand in Sasha’s direction. “She’s one of your people. She was born here. This colony is all she’s ever known. You have to explain to her.”

  “You’re too young to understand,” Hoffman pleads with Sasha. “We—I—had to make impossible choices. There wasn’t enough food. And it was a mercy. The people who use our drug don’t feel any hunger pains, and they don’t even notice their bodies shutting down. It gives people like you and Clarissa, good people, a chance to survive.”

  Sasha stares at the colony’s leader, her mom’s boss, with tears streaming down her face. Luc has to remind himself she wanted to see this. “I don’t . . .” she gropes for an unaccustomed formality. “I don’t recognize your authority any longer.”

  “I didn’t set up the drug operation,” Becky Hoffman says. She’s sweating, and inching her hand toward something under her pillow. A silent alarm? Her guards are already taken care of. “I found out about it. I told them they could work for me, or be executed. I turned it into a way to save the colony. This was the only way to ration the food that wouldn’t lead to riots.”

  Becky Hoffman makes her move, pulling out a power-welder of the sort that you’d use to repair hull damage on a starship in flight. It’s the size and shape of a big fork, like you’d use on a pot roast. At close range, it would tear a hole in Palm Strike that even his healing mojo couldn’t begin to fix. He’s already on her, trying to pin her wrist, but she slips under his guard. She brings the power welder up and activates it, bringing it within a few centimeters of Palm Strike’s chest.

  “Now,” he tells Sasha.

  Sasha squeezes the remote she rigged up, and an explosion in the distance rattles the survival module so violently the emergency impact alarms go off, like a dozen electronic goats bleating. Hoffman’s grip loosens on the power-welder long enough for Palm Strike to knock it out of her grasp.

  Palm Strike looks into Hoffman’s tear-soaked face and unleashes The Voice. “That was your drug lab. Next time, it’ll be your office. Your days of choosing who gets to live are over. You are going to help me fix this mess.” And then Palm Strike gestures for Sasha to go back out the window they came in. He takes the power-welder with him.

  12.

  LUC DIGS until his arms are throbbing, and he’s waist deep in the hard, unyielding earth. Probably deep enough—he doesn’t want to hit one of those underground hot springs. Then he clambers back out, and tosses the helmet, safety vest, gloves and leggings into the hole. It’s not like burying the actual Palm Strike costume, but close enough. And if he needs safety gear later, he’ll know where some’s buried.

  “Do you want to say some words?” Sasha asks. She’s hit a growth spurt, and her wrists and ankles are miles long. Even in the higher gravity, you get human beanpoles. Amazing.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Luc grunts.

  “We are gathered here today to remember Palm Strike,” Sasha intones.

  “Cut it out,” Luc says. “Seriously.”

  “He was a good man, even though we never knew who he really was. Some said he was a sea slug that oozed inside some old safety gear and pretended to be a man. But he fought for justice.”

  Luc tunes out her terrible funeral oration, starts filling in the hole. He pauses just long enough to turn and look out at the farmland, where they’ve managed to transplant a handful of the “t
rees” from the other side of the geyser, and a few acres of sorghum are being planted. Too close together. You’ll want at least a couple feet between plants, or the mites will shred the roots. He’ll need to talk to McGregor about that. He’s almost done filling the hole, and Sasha is still nattering.

  “—and he dedicated himself to helping people, unless they had really gross teeth or bad breath, in which case they were on their own.”

  Luc slings the shovel over his shoulder, and wrestles with the temptation to tell her to shut the hell up for once. Instead, he just shrugs and says, “I knew this was a bad idea.”

  The sun is going down. The parade of moons begins. Luc turns and walks back the way they came. Sasha doesn’t quit blabbing the whole way back to the colony, which is still filled with the susurration of a thousand people moaning in the grasp of drug withdrawal, like souls crawling out of hell. Part of Luc feels compassion at the sound, but another part of him finds the din weirdly comforting. It sounds like home.

  BROOD

  by Stephen Gaskell

  Growing up on Mars, Lena had heard tales of the Slicers—augmented soldier, more machine than human, left over from the Fringe Wars. She’d thought them boogeymen made up by parents to frighten willful children into obedience. Now, she knew different.

  LENA HAD TO HAND IT to her brother. He didn’t shy away from the system’s most inhospitable places. She’d used to think he was testing her, testing to see how far she would go to forge a bond with him, but now, twenty-seven years after she’d become his little sister, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe he did want to be alone, and she should just stop trying. She could certainly do without his so-called charm.

  They’d lost contact with his research team hours ago. They’d swept past the same pitted plains, the same mountainous ridge of volcanoes, the same abandoned derricks, four times in their low-slung orbit. He’d known something was up, but all she’d got out of him was a dismissive “You can’t land yet” before the link had turned to white noise.

  “I say we set down.” Nik Magyar, the Miura-Sagan Prize-winning journalist, spun head-over-heels, bored out of his mind.

  Lena sighed.

  She wasn’t cut out for chaperoning. She didn’t know how much longer she could hold him off. Corporate-sponsored gigs like this weren’t his usual bag. This was a man who was used to working alone, getting his own way—much like her brother, Artem.

  “I said ‘I say we set down.’”

  “I heard you. And you heard my brother. We’re not—”

  “They might be in trouble.”

  Possible, but unlikely. More likely a fried RF relay or EM interference had crippled the comms. She had to be careful. Obtaining the license for the experimental trial had taken the better part of a year of legal wrangling with the Astronautical Control Agency, the United Interplanetary Space Authority, the Biotech Ethics Committee, and the rest. It might never be granted again. Artem—not to mention the Genotech board—would be mighty pissed if rockstar writer Nik Magyar saw something he shouldn’t. They wanted a PR coup, not a PR disaster. “We wait.”

  “Do you do everything he tells you?”

  His question needled her. “I trust him.”

  Nik shrugged. If you say so.

  Lena liked that even less. “I’ll tell you what. We’re not landing, but maybe we can take a closer look.”

  Nik smiled. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Ancient lava flows coated the crust in a glittering mineral of deep red hue. Sea-green gashes laced the ochre fields where shallow impacts had exposed the olivine mantle. In places, meadows of purple grass clung to the stone. It was a form of needlegrass geneered from archea microorganisms, and one of Artem’s greatest triumphs. It survived solely on solar energy and silicates, a marvel of resilience—and a steady source of food for the harvesters.

  “There,” Lena whispered, spying one of the giant insects.

  Nik studied the lone forager, rapt. “Surreal.”

  “On Mars their size would cripple them.”

  Nik shook his head, disbelieving. “How do they survive?”

  “Mucus.”

  “Mucus?”

  “Their bodies are coated in the stuff. Traps enough air and warmth for them to survive outside for a time.”

  Lena explained how after Vesta’s precious ores had been excavated, cleaned, and brought to the surface, a specialized flinger caste would toss it into space. Through reference to the star field—and this was another stroke of genius on her brother’s part—the flingers could be trained to send the ore through solar windows like the Kirkwood Gap, ensuring their capture at the Lagrange points or in Earth’s or Mars’ gravitational wells. From there, orbital mining scoops would collect the ores. “This is going to be revolutionary.”

  Twenty years ago they’d lost their father in a drilling accident on Ceres. Extraction tech hadn’t fundamentally changed since the pre-space era, and Artem dreamed of dragging the industry into the rwenty-second century, breaking the corps’ monopoly of medieval practices.

  “Now we definitely have to land,” Nik said.

  Lena rattled the small aerosol can of pheromone. “You know, this stuff hasn’t been tested yet.”

  The chemical had been manufactured in the Genotech labs from data transmitted back by the Vesta team. A fine spray over their suits would identify Lena and Nik as members of the insect colony, and allow them to wander unchallenged—that was the theory, anyhow.

  “Nik,” Lena gasped. “Look.”

  On the holo an entourage of smaller insects swarmed around one of the colossal flingers. Lena’s mouth went dry. The smaller insects weren’t cleaning the flinger as they should’ve been. They were attacking it. She watched on, couldn’t help herself as they slashed and tore at the behemoth, gouging its eyes, puncturing its carapace. It fought back, but its immense size hindered its attacks on its small, nimble foes. Straw-yellow ichor spilled from its wounds, marking the rocks.

  “You okay?” Nik asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid for Artem, for the others.”

  “Shit, you don’t think—”

  “I don’t know!” Lena imagined the insects clashing in the dark, musty tunnels of the nest. It’d be no place for a person, pheromoned or not. Stupidly, she felt guilty too. She’d been angry when they’d last spoken, lived up to the childish image he had of her.

  “Lena—”

  “What?”

  “Easy there. I was—”

  “Easy there? My brother’s down there, not a fucking story!” She raked her hands into her hair, pulled hard. “I’m sorry.”

  They stared at one another, the silence festering. Landing would be suicidal. Backup was weeks away. They were both about to speak, when the navigation holo blinked to life. A compact object tore into the heavens not twenty klicks away. Lena neuralled the holo, began instructing it for an object composition analysis.

  “Don’t bother,” Nik said. “I’d recognize that trail signature anywhere.” He spun towards the vacsuit lockers. “That was a rescue flare.”

  The survivor trekked across a crystal plain, gunmetal vacsuit contrasting with the prismatic red stone. He—Lena assumed it was a he from the survivor’s languid bearing—waved. His lack of urgency unnerved Lena. She tried hailing him on the close-range frequency, but only got static.

  “Funny,” she said, speaking into her helmet’s mic, “radio’s off.”

  Like Lena, Nik had put on his vacsuit. He stood by the entry hatch, impatient, eyes glued to a small holo that relayed a grainy feed of the survivor. “Maybe he can sign?”

  Lena didn’t appreciate the joke. “I just want to know who it is.”

  “So do I. And before they’re made into very modern art.”

  They set down on a small plateau, not two hundred meters from the survivor. “Hold tight,” Lena said.

  The hatch groaned open. Lena felt a chill enveloping her, the buzz of her thermal sleeve responding. She didn’t like the sensation, did
n’t like the situation, either. “Off and on, Nik. No dallying.” She listened to herself inhale, exhale, the noises amplified by the helmet. “Nik? You get that?”

  Nik hunkered down, staring out the hatch. “I got it,” he said, distractedly.

  “And watch your step, you’ll be practically weightless.”

  She wondered who it would be—maybe Carlson, or Petronis, or perhaps it was Miera, the short, tough Brazilian. She didn’t dare imagine that it was Artem—

  “Get us out of here!” Nik’s footsteps thrummed through the starsloop’s metalloceramic skeleton. He jammed himself into the co-pilot’s seat. “Now!”

  Lena blinked, confused. Survivors need rescuing.

  Nik didn’t wait a second time, leaning across Lena and wrenching her command field into his lap. His fingers rippled through the light. The starsloop lurched upwards pressing Lena down hard.

  “What is it?” she stuttered.

  Nik ignored her, slammed his right hand forward. The starsloop responded likewise, plowing forward, engines screeching. Lena’s head cracked against the headrest with a dull thump. Pain bloomed. The external cam was still slaved on the survivor, and in a dozy slo-mo she watched the man begin to raise his arm.

  Poor soul, she thought.

  Except what she’d thought was a last desperate plea wasn’t. A pulse of earth-sky blue flashed across the vacuum, followed by a tremendous crash. They went into a terrifying spin, the whole craft churning and whining and shaking, while everything blurred. Nik shouted something, but his words were lost as his teeth chattered and the warning sirens blared. She tasted blood on her tongue.

  The low gravity prolonged their descent into a long drawn-out affair, putting klicks between themselves and their attacker. Lena’s life didn’t so much flash as amble before her eyes.