Author: Collector

“You taking the mission or not, Wong?” The Colonel didn’t give a fuck. That’s what it sounded like to me, anyways. “Short notice,” I said, thinking it through, looking across the room at Maddock, strip-cleaning her M4, and I figured I better clean my own soon. I’d put more than a few rounds down the barrel this morning. Pour encourager […]

With an annoyed sigh, the Orc helmsman looked up from the scanner display on his station’s crystal-screen. “It’s a Sun-Damned flake of scrap, Cori. You’re acting like my nephew snuggling his plush Tarrasque.” “Shut your tusk-hole, Norrish. This shard is our ticket to big things. Better things. GLITTERING things.” She held up the piece of rough-edged metal, and inspected the […]

The room was bare, save the single metal table bolted down to the floor, and the three chairs. I was sitting on the proverbial wrong side of that table, as I spared a glance at the wide one-way mirror on one of the walls, and then I made a face as I looked up at the camera. The room looked […]

The entire production facility erupted into thunderous applause when the space yacht slowly made its way out of the assembly dock. The completion of the first test model for the new XG3 was celebrated with exuberant enthusiasm all across the shipyard space station Zukunftsfabrik in orbit around Mars. Robert, a 28 year old engineer and software specialist was part of […]

Warrant Officer Yuri Yanuk stood in the hallway before the closed doors of the Intelligence Service Cipher School’s auditorium. Within, the voices of dozens of flag officers were raised in heated debate. He knew it was a debate about his work, but he didn’t know exactly what was being debated. No matter how hard he strained his ears, he couldn’t […]

“Oh, Ava, don’t let me forget to give you that stuff from the sales.” They had been talking for an hour over lunch with no mention of what said stuff was, but it was a phrase Ava’s yard sale loving grandmother uttered nearly every time they met. It could mean she had any number of things for her grad student […]

Rafi and I had been friends for years, but there were still a few things I hadn’t figured out about her. I knew she was a fellow nerd—we’d been playing Dungeons and Dragons together for five years—and I knew she liked cats and sci-fi, and worked for an architectural firm. I knew “Rafi” was short for Rafeeqa, and that her […]

Mindy Beckman lay quietly in bed waiting. She knew that he would soon be here. As she looked out into the total blackness of her bedroom, her mind went back to the very first time that she had seen him appear in her room. She was only seven. She didn’t know how old he was then, or if, in fact, […]

Cindy Beckman lay quietly in bed waiting. She knew that he would soon be here. As she looked out into the total blackness of her bedroom, her mind went back to the very first time that she had seen him appear in her room. She was only seven. She didn’t know how old he was then, or if, in fact, […]

As best I can recall now, the whole life-changing incident occurred in spring time. You’ll have to forgive my blurred memory. At this distance, it becomes difficult to remember exact dates. Anyway, on with the whole sordid story. So, let me just tell my story, and if you want to alter anything to make it fit together better, be my […]