"No one loves a clank at midnight."

The message was scrawled all over the room. The walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the center of the room was a clank, for all appearances in perfect working order, and yet it seemed unable to move.

Closer to the door,…

Dear Diary,

I killed a man today. At least, I think I did. I was alone in the room one minute, and the next there was a man in front of me. I'm not sure who was more surprised -- him or me. I know I was pretty shocked, but by his expression, so was h…

Harold skidded to a stop next to the girl, his mass and motion nearly carrying him over her. He stopped just in time, the tips of his front paws just touching the flesh of the girl's arm. She didn't react, didn't even flinch. Her eyes flickered to the mas…

With a thought, Carlotta's sword is in her hand instantly, both blades alight with yellow plasma. She feels the change in emotions of her entire entourage. The soldiers are on high alert, their weapons now locked into firing position. The scholars are onl…

Carlotta walks with her escort through the corridors of the capitol building toward the platform where her transport awaits. The people walking with her are eight soldiers, two scholars, a City emissary, and a furtive pet belonging to one of the scholars.…

She had a flicker of sadness as her ship pulled away from Lorentz Station.

She didn't pay it much mind though as the adventure ahead was far greater than anything she could have imagined: A posting on the USS Elena Pitjeva. It was the first Orion class s…

Vines and creepers covered every part of the bulkhead's interior. Sickly brown leaves, branches whose mottled bark looked like scales, as well as wicked looking thorns choked the mouth of the doorway. The metal surround it had warped, in some places buckl…

Klaxons. Klaxons everywhere. Truly this was it.

It was the dead of night, of course. They never attacked during the day. That was too obvious, and we'd see them coming a mile away -- on a cloudless day. (And even on overcast days, they always mysteriousl…

"Telemetry from the probe has been parsed and analyzed, Captain," Lady responds. The ship's voice is a soothing alto, designed to accommodate for the crew as they recover. "The data has already been uploaded to your stations and synced with your datapad…

The Classy Lady parks itself in a synchronous orbit above the asteroid Berger-Behregen before waking and decanting the crew. The ship locates and contacts the telemetry beacon planted in the surface of the rock while the members of the crew shake off th…

"Explain what I'm looking at."

"Timestream 8496775816-AQZ-25.13.4. We pulled it from yesterday's archives when it was flagged anomolous."

"Meaning?"

"Look here. Grid 117, Segment 16, Node 135. See that curvature?"

"Yes. Explain its significance."

"Ti…

He trudged through the sand, up and over great dunes of the stuff, while the wind blasted him with even more of the fine grains. Visibility was shit, and he walked more by instinct than anything. He'd long ago lost his way. The gale-force storm did nothin…

Captain Adriana Milosovic felt the deck tremble beneath her feet. It was subtle, barely even there at all, and yet it was enough that her senses came to high alert. She glanced around the bridge at her crew, but they were all engaged in their own tasks. N…

"Anything?" Bantu asked.

"Gimme a sec," replied Shari. With a gloved hand she reached into the mist hovering before her, dipping a small test tube into it and filling it as best she could. With the other hand she stoppered it before withdrawing it and ge…

It wasn't fair. Not at all. She mulled over in her mind how mission control could make such a decision and not even consult her. The audacity of it boggled her mind.

Taylor had been assigned to this mission on accident essentially, but her contributions …

Ada stood on the surface of the moon and stared back at her home planet. Perimeter drones circled overhead, filling the air with the constant hum of their engines.

Over a year had passed since the relocations began. No signs were forthcoming that they …

Damion stands at the edge of the woods, just inside the treeline. His attention is focused on the house 35 yards away, the house that is surrounded by a teeming mass of the living dead. He hears screams from inside, cries for help from the poor souls trap…

The guard in front of the incubator chamber checked Alan's ID carefully, moving it to see the holograms dance. Mother as always hired the best. For herself.

“Sorry for your loss,” the guard said.

“She'll be back soon,” Alan replied, staring at the seedp…

Jim Sanumá parked his car, such as it was, far enough west of the airport not to be seen. Retrieving its cargo from the glove compartment, he gave the lock mechanism a sharp kick. It folded sharply, forming a rough box shape, which Jim shoved into the dit…

"We've got it."

Captain Khan's tablet filled with lines of text and numbers. A massive spreadsheet, with some sort of unreadable data, plus a long program, rendered in some programming language.

A second message popped up onscreen.

"Target was not bank,…

The surviving security footage from the office building was taken out, uploaded to the police computers, and processed until it divulged its secrets. Within two hours, it had created facial reconstructions of the heist team.

The faces had been run through…

The Old Man, holding his gaze on the computer screen, raised his hand and curled his finger. Come.

Vargas didn't need to be told twice, but he hesitated nonetheless. Is this a trap? he wondered.

He steeled his nerves and brought forth the briefcase. "…

They took their passages out. Secret subterranean extensions in the parking garage led them into the storm drain system, then up the drainpipe, down the fire escape, across the building, and safely conveyed them to their vehicles a few blocks away.

They …

A moment passed, for Matt Quyen, where he was uncertain if he had gone from standing to lying on his chest, about a story lower, with a few broken ribs and ringing in his ears, in one unbroken sequence, or if he had lain there for minutes or hours. His ve…

They open the steel-walled box which contains the data. It's a red plastic object the rough size of a brick and shape of a Lego, with grey cable ports on the underside. One of them flips the drive upside-down in a single, fluid, motion that takes a fracti…