An explosion of light in the cold emptiness above the world below. The entire surface of the planet awash in alien iridescence, thousands left temporarily blind and disoriented from the Administrative ranks to the lowliest Tradejack apprentice. It took mere microts for the order to be given before a flotilla of Imperial Gunships were sent to investigate.

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Reggie Evans had spent his entire life falling; through cracks, through people’s hands, through ideas and concepts. He was well-adjusted to the freedom of it, to the rush of air stinging his eyes, to the far-away voices floating in the opposite direction. The kid understood gravity better than some of the world’s best physicists. They could study it for years, hack away at its aspects and velocities and ratios, but he was the only person on the planet that could know it so intimately. It hadn’t let go since the doctor dropped him on day one.

As he tumbled and tossed downward, somersaulting toward the latest in a 17-year string of plane crashes, he noticed something different. This time there was a bottom. Not a metaphorical one, not the famed “end of the line” he’d been warned about by parents and schoolteachers for years, but a beige, dust-covered tile floor.

There were 20 seconds between his frame and a certainly fatal impact. 20 seconds to consider how the priorities in his life had shuffled. Yesterday, his mind had been wrapped around finances, how he would pull together enough scratch to get Christina a birthday present. Today, the primary topic of discussion was the hereafter. Forgiveness. The myriad things he’d been told not to do in Sunday school and the very real possibility that tossing that list in a trash can at age 9 had earned him a balmy final resting place.

Flailing allowed him one final rotation, a chance to look up and see something radiant, white and pure. It sure as hell wasn’t heaven. That beam was coming from someone’s hands, someone old who had been saying things Reggie should have listened to. As usual, Reggie had chosen to listen too little, too late.

5, maybe 7 seconds to go. The light was fading and the assassin had moved on, opting not to watch what was sure to be a sickening impact. He wasn’t going to spin again. Gravity had better things to do. He would end his days ass backwards, just as he’d started them.

Impact.

The floor was as solid as it looked. The tile fractured. So did Reggie’s ribs. The silver dust took flight upon collision, rising like a cloud of spores. Reggie gasped and swallowed the choking residue, coughing and sputtering like an old muffler. His back went numb. He started to gag. Blood rimmed his lips, because you have to bleed when you die. It’s less climactic otherwise.

He wasn’t sure if he was rolling around in pain or if the pounding of gavels in his head was just making him dizzy. Gravity had abandoned him, severing their unspoken bond. The floor, the ceiling and everything in between had joined. His equilibrium was a nightmare.

Someone pulled the plug and his eyes stopped working. Things went from red to gray to sepia-toned, but not black. His sight just went away, as if it had never been there. He hadn’t seen this coming and now he certainly wouldn’t see how it ended.

Most people don’t expect to die when they get up in the morning, but that’s because they’re in no rush to get there. Reggie was different. He didn’t walk or run to his final destination. He drove, in a gas-guzzling four-door truck, built for comfort and speed. He was bobbing his head to a mix of Public Enemy and Rage against the Machine, spouting off choruses that never really meant anything to him. Nothing really did. If something seemed aimless, he was all for it. He kicked down doors, but never left them open for anyone to follow. His life had been a high-octane pursuit. Nobody had led the way, and even worse, nobody had cared enough to chase.

The injuries were taking their toll, but they were taking their damn time doing it. It figured. He’d broken the speed limit for 17 years. He could idle for the last 17 minutes. Why hurry? He hadn’t expected to die that day.

But he sure as hell hadn’t expected to kill anyone either.

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“This is all very interesting, Mister Castle,” said the four-star general. He was a West Point man, Army for twenty-seven years. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs for the past year. But he still didn’t have a damn clue what the man before him was showing to him after
a quick ten minute virtual presentation in the privacy of Castle’s office. “But I fail to see how your solutions stack up to what the Seven provide.”

“Provide-ED,” said Nicholas, with emphasis on the past tense ending. “We’ve seen what happened to that group. They were the best we had, when they were created. I’m showing you something better.”

“Not yet you haven’t.”

“I’m sure we could discuss the pros and cons of the Seven, General. And I can confidently predict that you would support them because of their military backgrounds and government training, but I would counter with a much more solid argument. You see,
there’s nothing like competition to produce the best things. Food, technology, toys…it all goes together. After all, the competition for military contracts is very fierce, although no pilot wants to think of his plane as being built by the lowest bidder, much less the infantryman and his rifle, or the gunner and his tank.”

The general shifted in his leather chair. “Go on.”

“So I offer you something that those in the military and the government love to hear, General. What I have to offer you will not cost you more than the Seven. It will not cost you more than the B-2 bomber program or a new Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. It will cost
you in legitimate building contracts and subsidized federal insurance as outlined in my prospectus.” Castle waved a hand to the leather-covered folder at the General’s left elbow. The only ornamentation was an embossed kite shield, crenellated at the top, enclosing a capital letter C. “So, General, what do you have to lose by listening and looking at just a
few more things?”

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Melbourne, Australia // Earth #746387 // 2002

Lisa Wilson curled up in her large bed and hugged one of her pillows. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out all of the sounds that she could hear from her bedroom - the traffic outside, the television, and the sound of the shower as her boyfriend prepared for work in the ensuite which shared a wall with her bedhead.

Of all the noise, the television was the hardest to ignore - Australian Angels was on, and Lisa loved its heart-warming premise - but it was her boyfriend’s movement that held her attention. Shane Curtis was a fireman; by all accounts, an exceptionally good fireman - and in the years that Lisa had known him there had never been a summer in which he wasn’t called away to fight some sort of massive flame-related threat.

Usually, it was a bushfire on the border; but this year, they seemed relatively under control - still, that didn’t stop her worrying every morning, as he got ready for work, that he may not come home that night. So she tried to block out the sounds he made, so she didn’t have to think about what he was doing or what he might be going to do.

Lisa’s brother, Nico, was also a fireman, but she found she never worried as much about him. She guessed at one stage that it was because of their familial relationship - their many years spent bickering as children. She had chosen to make Shane a part of her life, and she wanted to keep him close. Things were different with Nico. He was her brother, but he wasn’t hers - and he had always been there, until five years earlier when he had moved to Pacific City -

The same Pacific City that filled the television screen, the subject of an urgent news broadcast interrupting Australian Angels Read the rest of this entry »

Sheila had heard her mother’s over-dramatic screams in the past. Spoilt, shrill, nigh-inhuman screeches that were normally directed at the various passengers of Celia Torrance’s carousel of romance. Dirtbag boyfriends or fuck buddies who, more often than not, would either embarrass her publicly or invariably be caught stealing from the Torrance household in some manner.

Paul being the latest and longest lasting rider was neither a deadbeat or social oaf thus Sheila could assume one of two things:

1. Her mother’s legs have been spreading while Paul is gone at work

or

2. Celia was about to die.

Sheila assuming the latter, but almost hoping for the former, buried her face into her pillow and ventured back into sleep.

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In what is commonly referred to as the ‘Enigma Vestibule‘ by the Apothecary Company, a massive room filled with dark-haired adolescents toil over vats filled with various solutions and meticulously sculpt and shape various material on spartan work benches. Others stand, stone still as they grind gritty materials with a porcelain crucible in one hand and make minute movements with their silver pistils with the other.

Every so often a quiet sob would cause the entire room of young women to lament and wail the names of their beloved friends and partners. Their very tears mixing into the liquids and powders of their trade. A klaxon sounded after one such fit, and with such a quickness most of them dove to the cold floor, save for two.

Both sported an eye patch, covering opposite deformities, one missing the left and the other missing the right ocular orb. Their eye patches nothing more than a small swatch of leather with a matching black thong to hold it to their skull. In rushed a handful of armored dragoons. Each helmeted minion carrying not rifles as their infantry counterparts sport but rather a single long slip of parchment bearing a striking sigil with a brief script scrawled beneath it in curiously, scarlet ink.

Each of their green eyes watched as the soldiers formed a semi-circle before them.

“8695554 and 287421 cease all unsanctioned activity at once,” the middle dragoon commanded, the parchment held stiffly between the fingers of her gloved hand.

The girls grinned dual empty smiles, devoid of teeth.

The unit stepped back in unison, holding true to their semi-circular formation, although one at the far end gagged at the sight.

“I warn you once more 869554 and 287421,” the officer’s voice squeaked out the designations with a once lost girlish tone.

The two bowed deeply and a quiet pop echoed in the silence.

“Ghastly,” said the dragoon that gagged.

The girls snapped up to attention and removed their eye patches to bare their eyeless sockets defiantly at their oppressors.

A dragoon shuddered, briefly, “I’m gonna hurl, 771284.”

the two eyeballs rolled about on the floor, weaving their way to within inches of the feet of the dragoon officer. The outer surface seemed to harden, and then crack, little green licks of flame poking out of the growing openings in the once eye-like casing.

“YOU - WERE- WARNED!”

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Smoke curled upwards from his tensed muscles, his ram headdress burning as his shoulders twitched and relaxed, his body straightening and unfolding from around the crouched form of his mistress. In the last moments before Azuel’s self-destruction he had just managed to free himself from the fallen angel’s deathly grasp in time to launch forwards and shield his mistress from the blast, absorbing the fire and brimstone that had rained down upon his back.

Now, in the aftermath of the explosion, the sand turned black beneath him and pocked with flowers of tiny flame, Millennium Man Ram Strength Immortal was at his lowest ebb. He dropped to his knees, his chest heaving and his eyes wild, sweat and blood pouring down his face. Surely now they had proved their superiority over the stubborn peoples of Earth #746387, surely now they could return safe in the knowledge that they were the supreme power on all worlds?

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The hull of the Coeur-de-Leon exploded, splintering outwards and spraying their shields with shards with ruin. Through the gutted wreck the startled and uncertain shapes of both the Repulse and the Prince of Wales came slowly into view, their own shields sputtering and flickering as they too were hit by the blossoming wreck of the dead craft.

Red light filled the bridge, deepening the shadows and drawing thick lines in his face as he lined forwards once again and bellowed the order to keep firing.

Blistering light filled the view-screen, arcing across the nose of the Repulse before curving down and towards the planet’s surface. From the belly of the fleet’s flagship the heavy cannons boomed, the whole craft shuddered with every motion.

“Sir, we’re tracking two unknown light craft breaking away from the planet’s surface. Their types and abilities are unknown to us.” Ensign d’Arc shouted, her voice all but hysterical as she turned from her console, her legs trembling visibly.

He snapped his attention away from her and the towers of light that slammed into the planet below them.

“Put them on the screen NOW!” He shouted mercilessly.

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Michael Manly stood on the corner of 11th and Carnival Street. The buildings looked pale in the early morning light, translucent and untouched. People had gathered in the street, standing perfectly still except for the occasional sigh or the shuffle of feet. The traffic had stopped to allow the quiet musings of the suddenly poignant pedestrians and it seemed as if the city itself had fallen silent in respect of this. There were no birds nor were there the distant sounds of construction work or traffic lights. Every radio, every television in the city had fallen ominously silent.

He stepped fearfully from the pavement, placing his two feet over the yellow lines and out into the road. The crowd remained solemn and still and, as he reached closer, he began to realise that each one was in some way transparent. Like the buildings there was no substance to them, just the intimation, the shape of things. He looked up at the brilliant blue sky and the burning sun overhead. For a moment he imagined clouds drifting suddenly over the sun before turning back to the silent crowd.

“Where am I?” He asked out loud.

It was not the question he had intended to ask but, upon speaking it, he felt that it was the right question.

“This is the afterlife, Michael.” A sad, familiar voice answered.

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She stepped forwards, her hands triumphantly upon her hips and her chin jutting out as her sharp, hateful eyes fell upon the small planet in the distance below her. A cruel smile twisted her perfect lips as she brushed her flowing curls of blonde hair away from the shoulders of her decorative military uniform.

“Earth #746387 now in sight, ma’am.” Called out a weak voice from the navigation pit far beneath her throne. “Weapons now locked onto Pacific City and awaiting your command.”

With a shudder of sheer joy she ran her tongue over her dry lips, not pausing once to think of the morning’s careful application of lipstick. She allowed herself a moment of silence, turning those sharp eyes towards the full expanse of the English Rose’s bridge. Around her, servants, officers and heroes awaiting in anticipation of her word, the single word that would signal war with Earth #746387 and the death of its most symbolic nest of Science Heroes. They awaited death and blood and glory and all the other sorts of things that she imagined heroes were obliged to do for their sovereign.

Carefully she turned her eyes back towards the small planet that had grown to such significance that it now all but filled the view-screen. Transcendent clouds drifted over the sunken continents of the planet and its vast, blue oceans – still intact, unlike the drained craters of her own Earth. There were no spires rising high up into the heavens on this Earth, no fortified satellites and artificial space-dock. Even the expansive sky-rail that traversed the planet, metal track spanning the distance between continents, was absent.

“This world,” She whispered, tightening one hand into a fist and causing the plastic of her gloves to creak in protest. “Is so pure and beautiful.”

There was silence on the bridge, no sound aside from the muttering of the ship’s computers conversing with the rest of the fleet and the fledging omni-matrix that governed the technology used in moving such vast, impossible vessels through the cosmos.

She drew an exquisite breath deep into her lungs and whispered with soft contempt: “Fire.”

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