Heir Apparent - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4 Read online

  Copyright Information

  HEIR APPARENT

  Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4

  These stories are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination, fictitious, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or aliens, living or dead, would be coincidental and quite remarkable.

  Heir Apparent: Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4

  Copyright © 2011 by Digital Science Fiction, a division of Gseb Marketing Inc.

  All rights reserved, including but not limited to the right to reproduce this book in any form, electronic or otherwise. The copying of the printed or electronic work and the scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book or the individual stories contained herein via the Internet or any other means without the express written permission of the Publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized print and electronic editions and do not participate in the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Support and respect the authors’ rights.

  Published by: Digital Science Fiction, a division of Gseb Marketing Inc.

  1560 Argus Street, LaSalle, Ontario, Canada—N9J 3H5

  President—Michael Wills

  Managing Editor—Stephen Helleiner

  Production Manager—Craig Ham

  Heir Apparent: Digital Science Fiction Anthology 4

  Editor—Christine Clukey

  Cover Art—Emmanuel Xerx Javier

  Layout and Design—Master Page Design

  Floaters—Copyright © 2011 by Robert Lowell Russell; Persistence of Memory—Copyright © 2011 by Brandon Nolta; To Titan on the Daily—Copyright © 2011 by George Walker; Ghostbook—Copyright © 2011 by Paul Cook; A Lincoln in Time—Copyright © 2011 by Eric James Stone; Hooked—Copyright © 2011 by Cassandra Rose Clarke; My Silent Slayer—Copyright © 2011 by Ed Greenwood; Philosophy—Copyright © 2011 by Ronald D. Ferguson; In the Arms of Lachiga—Copyright © 2011 by Alex Kane; Father-Daughter Outing—Copyright © 2011 by Martin L. Shoemaker

  First Published, November 2011

  (e)ISBN: 978-0-9869484-6-6 (ebk)

  ISBN: 978-0-9869484-7-3 (pbk)

  http://digitalsciencefiction.com

  Preface

  We nearly entitled this edition of our anthology series “Smorgasbord” due to the variety of stories in this volume, but the title morphed into its current form after we decided on the cover art concept. See if you can find the “Heir Apparent” in each of these short stories.

  The “Heir” will be simple to spot in some stories, but not so easy to determine in others. In the story that our cover art was taken from (Father-Daughter Outing), the heir should be fairly clear…but who is the heir in A Lincoln in Time? How might one select an heir from In the Arms of Lachiga? Some of these connections are not direct—the characters are not heirs of the body, but of a location, intellect, or spirit. Each story has its own unique version of an heir, and we look forward to hearing from our readers on whether those heirs truly do represent a passing down of some type of human bond or connection.

  Thanks go out once again to my partners, Stephen Helleiner and Craig Ham, and to our design and editorial staff as well. We have a few repeat offenders—or rather, authors—this time around, and we’re glad to have them back and providing new stories for your enjoyment. We’d also like to thank all of the authors who submitted their work over the summer. We look forward to including more of you in our future anthologies.

  Digital Science Fiction is a quarterly anthology of compelling science fiction short stories from professional writers. It is published each quarter through popular eBook formats and in traditional print. Our anthologies are directed toward a mature readership. While our home base is Ontario, Canada, our artists, editors, designers, and of course authors, hail from around the world. More information about us is available at digitalsciencefiction.com.

  Thank you again for your continued support, and we hope you enjoy the wide range of adventures set forth in this anthology.

  Michael Wills

  Digital Science Fiction

  Floaters

  By Robert Lowell Russell

  I put my fingers on the observation glass as I watched tugs move freighters to and from the station. When I pulled my hand away, the marks my fingers made lingered, then disappeared. Beyond the station, a billion stars shone in the black. I knew that darkness.

  “There ain’t no one in this ‘verse without some sort of demon chasing them,” the old man had said. “Some folks run so far ahead of the darkness, they don’t know to look back. Others…” He grinned. “Well, I hardly ran at all.”

  I’d put a bullet through the old man’s heart, saving the trial. Shame what he’d done to those girls.

  My hands were shaking again. Deputy Cason came up beside me with a bottle in his hand. He tipped it back, taking a long, wet drag.

  “Goddamn it, Cason! Did you get that from my locker?”

  “Yeah, man. Did you want some?”

  He wiped the bottle with his shirt and handed it to me. I sighed and took a drag. The burn felt good going down.

  “I hear they’re gonna terminate you,” said Cason.

  “With a bullet? Or the other kind?”

  He shrugged.

  “Braddock,” said a quiet voice behind me.

  I flinched and slapped my hand to my hip. My gun wasn’t there. No side arms on the station.

  The boss stood behind me with a hint of the sneer he called a smile. “Follow me to my office, deputy. We need to chat.”

  Guess Cason was right: I’d finally burned my war hero pass. Most Fleet Marines got into some kind of security service after the war. No other place to put us after jacking us up. When you put the monster in, it was there to stay.

  A pile of films lay on the boss’s desk. One of them was pink—some traditions die hard. I sat, unasked, and the boss sat down across from me.

  “Deputy, how long have you worked for us?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Do you like your job? Think you can do anything else?” The boss glanced at the pink film but pushed a white film my way. “Think you can fuck up a simple prisoner transfer?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Your freighter leaves in fifteen minutes. You’ll get your weapon and badge dockside.”

  I glanced at the film. Sonofabitch…

  Even with the Krnylt’s jump drives it takes two weeks to get to a shithole like Frost. That’s what the locals called M197P5b. Frost was an ice moon orbiting a gas giant. It had been a fuel depot during the war, a “vital cog in the fight.”

  The war…The Krnylt had been like old Earth lions—the males, anyway. They hadn’t done anything but eat, fuck, and sleep until it was time to protect what was theirs. And we’d wanted it all. After some flash and bang, they’d expected us to turn tail and run. But we’d been too stupid for that.

  So the Krnylt blew our ships out of the sky. We sent more. They blew our planets to dust, nice and neat. We turned theirs to radiated slag. The Krnylt never showed much stomach for the blood and mess. One day they were turning us to pulp; the next, they’d left. We didn’t beat them—they’d quit. We’d never really learned to talk to each other. Best as the techs could translate, the Krnylt’s last message to us was [WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?]

  It took years for Fleet to clear all the Krnylt planets
. We couldn’t travel like they could…not at first. Fleet told me and the other POWs that we’d spent more than a year floating in sensory deprivation chambers with tubes jammed up every hole. The Krnylt even made us some new holes. Food and water went in, shit and piss went out. All nice and neat.

  We called the chambers “floaters”. Fleet brass thought the Krnylt used them to interrogate us, taking information right from our minds. I bet the Krnylt were disappointed.

  Never let anyone tell you Hell is hot or cold, because they don’t know. It’s warm and wet. There was one man to a floater, but you were never alone. There was always the darkness. It held you. It touched you. It whispered sweet nothings in your ear. And then it took you. Rough.

  Lieutenant Flores shook me awake. She looked pale. The lieutenant told me we were an hour out from Frost. I tried to tell her thanks, but my throat was too raw to speak. Had I been screaming again? I got up to go to the can and smiled lamely at Flores. She trembled as I went past. I’d definitely been screaming again.

  Most people don’t remember their dreams. I remember all of mine, every second. The last still lingered in my consciousness. The Krnylt had done something to our minds in the floaters—maybe so we’d be easier to interrogate, maybe just because they could. My dreams were always the same: I’m back in the floater, back in the darkness. They pulled me from the floater seven years ago. I don’t scream as much as I used to. Don’t sleep much either.

  It had been just me, Flores, and the Captain on this run. She went twelve hours on, twelve off. Apparently, she and the Captain didn’t talk to each other—he sure never talked to me.

  Two days into the trip, Flores had walked back and put her hand on my thigh. She was short and trim, almost cute.

  “I just wanted to say thank you,” she’d said. “I know I shouldn’t have looked, but I read about what you did in the war. You’re a hero.”

  I’d smiled, put my hand on hers. “Thanks, that really means a lot to me.”

  We’d fucked a dozen times since. She’d heard somewhere that Fleet Marines, enhanced like we were, were masters in the sack. Thanks to the brother who’d thought up that bullshit. All the marines I knew fucked like they fought: quick and dirty, then out like a light—even the women.

  Flores had seemed disappointed each time. Maybe she’d thought it was her fault, because she kept giving me a go. Wasn’t much else to do.

  Frost was an ugly lump with streaks of brown and beige, like God had wiped His ass with a chunk of ice. It was a dying world. With the jump drives, we didn’t need the exotic elements they mined there anymore. Anyone with somewhere to go had already left. There’d been one hundred and twenty-three colonists trying to scrape out a life with the machinery Fleet left behind. There’d be two less once I brought back the prisoner and the body.

  Frost colonists lived in one of Fleet’s prefab “turtle” bases. The “shell” was a large, central dome with a living habitat good for a thousand people. There were five smaller, peripheral domes arranged around it. The “head” was a standardized docking facility. The four “legs” were a pair of multi-purpose refining and manufacturing plants, an environmental plant, and a robotics bay.

  As I walked off his ship, the Captain barked, “Twenty-four hours!” then vanished below decks. The dock jocks ignored me while they scrambled to unload supplies to make room for the cargo heading back. I blinked in the dome’s “morning” light. It was the color of bone.

  It was 09:00 local and I was in no hurry. I looked for the cantina. Bad enough I’d have to listen to the prisoner blubber the whole way back. But the local cop must have been a morning person, because he was waiting for me at the dock.

  “Marshal Braddock?”

  Who else would I be? “Yes.” I presented my credentials and he pretended to give a shit. “Constable Taka, I presume?”

  “Yes, sir. Umm…” He looked at his feet and shuffled.

  Great. “So, Constable, what’s the bad news?”

  He looked up. “Well, sir—”

  I held up my hand. “It’s just Bill.”

  “Well, Bill, there’s been a problem with the prisoner.”

  Five minutes later, I was looking at Jefferson Willis, or what was left of him. His chest wasn’t much more than jagged meat.

  “Messy. What happened?” I asked.

  Taka did his little shuffle again. “My fault. Jeff seemed so cooperative, I just got sloppy. No excuses. He tried to grab my weapon, and it went off in the struggle.”

  “What the hell kind of weapon does that?”

  “Tunnel burner. Bots use them to melt the ice. We don’t have regular side arms.”

  I checked Willis’s face against the image I had on my data pad. The years had not been kind. He looked nothing like the fresh-faced kid shown in my file, just entering Fleet. Willis had not been lucky during the war—plenty of scars, inside and out. They’d even found him in a floater, same as me. Small galaxy, I guess.

  I used my pad to run a DNA scan, comparing the stiff’s code to what I had on record. When I got the green light, I gave the Constable a slap on the shoulder.

  “We have his confession, and the scan checks out,” I said. “This just saves us the cost of a trial. Can you have him cold-packed like the victim?”

  He nodded. “Of course. We only left him this way because we figured you’d need to see him.”

  “Sure. I’ll sign off on the paperwork once the ship’s ready to leave.”

  The Constable looked a little green, so I put on my most comforting smile.

  “I know you knew them both,” I said. “Don’t know if you were friends…but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  Jesus, was he going to cry?

  “This has been real hard on all of us,” he said.

  I glanced down at Willis’s body rather than look the Constable in the face. That’s when I noticed it…that it wasn’t Willis’s body. Why can it never be easy?

  I was in the cantina ten minutes later, nursing my second drink, wondering how to play things. The place served breakfast, so there was a crowd inside. They knew who I was, of course. I didn’t know if the people in the cantina were in on the switch, but they sure didn’t like me being there. They never took their eyes from me—cold, hard stares they thought I couldn’t see.

  They bought me my first round, real friendly, but must have thought better of a second from the way I’d pounded back the first. They’d kept things casual, making the same lame jokes about me drinking on duty. I’d smiled and given them a little wink. I won’t tell if you won’t.

  I’d struggled to keep my hand from my gun.

  Her name was Kate. She was blonde, a little heavy, and she stared at me like the others. But then she’d smiled—a warm, inviting smile—and made sure I’d seen it.

  She was the med tech at the base. No real doctor here, but she said she was a whiz with the med bay machines. She’d told me she was twenty-five like she’d hoped I’d believe it—I’d have guessed older.

  Back at her place, Kate and I went slow, took our time. She held me close after, pressing warm against me, stroking me. She traced a finger on my chest and touched the scars I had there carefully, like they might still hurt.

  “Jeff wasn’t a bad man,” she said.

  “I’m not really an investigator.”

  “You don’t care then?”

  She kept stroking me—I felt like a damned cat. When she touched the holes on my arms, she paused…then tensed.

  I usually kept the holes the Krnylt put in my arms covered to keep people from asking. Everyone Fleet had pulled from the floaters had them. Grafts couldn’t hide them—they just grew back thanks to some Krnylt genetic trick. The body the Constable had showed me hadn’t had the holes.

  Altering a face on dead tissue wasn’t all that hard. Fleet had doctored plenty of bodies for the nets—people got pissed when the Krnylt killed someone pretty. But altering DNA to beat a scan took some real talent. You’d need to be a whiz with the med machin
es.

  Kate was in on this with Taka and who knows who else. I knew Kate was smart—smarter than me, anyway. She’d aced the little stuff, but she’d missed the big picture and she’d just now realized it.

  When she got up from the bed, she made like she was headed for the can but turned to her office instead. Kate might be smart, but I was fast. I clamped my hand on her wrist before she finished warning the Constable on her data pad.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “Jeff found something. Something important.”

  “So you shake a little tail, and now I’m supposed to play along?”

  “No! You and me, what we did, that had nothing to do with Jeff. I just wanted…I just wanted to feel something.”

  “Let me know if you feel this.”

  I hit her in the side of the head and she crumpled. I ripped the sheets from her bed and bound her arms and legs.

  I didn’t get all the physics involved with the jump drives—something about the spatial distortion staying in phase for only so long—but I didn’t need reminding that the freighter was on a twenty-four-hour schedule. If I wasn’t on the ship when it had to leave, the Captain would ditch me in a heartbeat. I’d be stuck on Frost for at least a month. The locals knew that too.

  Kate had been a welcome diversion in more ways than one: I had all the eyes off me, and it had given me time to plan. Best case, I’d play dumb until just before the ship was ready to leave, then grab Willis and go—assuming I could find him.

  The less time I gave the locals, the less time they had to get stupid. By law, I could use whatever force necessary to bring back my prisoner…but the bosses preferred we show some restraint.

  I should have asked Kate what they’d planned to do if she couldn’t sell me on the body, but I didn’t do subtle so good. Also, she was in no shape to chat.

  I didn’t figure they’d kill me—that’d just bring the Marshals in force. My guess was the locals would try to keep Willis away from me as long as they could and expect me to play along with the switch when the clock ran out. If I couldn’t find Willis, that’s exactly what I’d do—I was damn sure getting back on that boat. With a valid scan, I doubted the bosses would double-check the body. I might even keep my job. But nobody fucking played me, and I had resources the locals didn’t know about.