STEPHAN MICHAEL LOY

@stephanloy.bsky.social

456 Followers 376 Following

Artist of paintings and photos, writer of novels and short stories, enjoyer of retirement, and eater of donuts. Visit my website: smloy.net

There. She may as well have killed herself. With that, she sagged against the engineering station, going not so much weak as emptied. She'd killed herself. She continued now as a lie. The whole ship acknowledged what she'd done, silent and still for a full half a minute. No shudders, no groaning, no flickering lights or things falling over. Judgmental. Into that judgment, Miranda sniffed. She went to wipe her nose, but the helmet visor defeated her. She shook her head. Shook it harder. Sucked in a wretched drag of breath. All attempts at centering, grasps for self-control. All of them failed. She burst into ragged sobs, her eyes welling, her vision blurring. Tears splashed against the inside of her visor. The ship decided to join her with a ratcheting report of over-stressed steel. "Stop it," Miranda told herself. "You're a baby. Stop."
"Hostetter's gonna be pissed," he finally said. She didn't answer. She just stared into the hole, her face blank. A heartbreaking vision, if you had known her before the incident. The red hair, frizzled, unkempt. The fair, freckled face, normally beautiful in an all-American way, lately just looking pale and haggard. The green eyes, once alert, mischievous, now reflecting flames like polished marbles. She wore no mask against the polluted air. She didn't care what she breathed. Garrett hadn't expected a ready response to his quip. For a long time, Fiona Street hadn't been home in her head.
All right. What now? "CDA, optimize attitude and propulsion to achieve an unassisted planetary orbit. Then shut down propulsion and effect repairs. Authorize a draw on any required stores. How many repair drones are available? "The ship carries a complement of sixteen astro-maintenance drones and four interior damage control drones." "Assign astro-maintenance drones one through six for propulsion repair, drones seven through ten for hull breach repair, and interior DC drones to effect structural repairs on the chapel. Oh, and when the chapel is finished, assign the interior DC drones to right the transit trams and test them for operation." The CDA spoke back its instructions, finishing with a curt "Complying." And Miranda imagined large, dog-like robots unfolding from their charge stations in the EVA compartment and trotting to their duties like the very good boys they were. All right. Next crisis.
We were flawed ideas, easily over-written, accidents on a Mobius loop. For whatever can be dreamed can be forgotten, or doubted, or debased. No one saw that flaw in our existence. No one saw us as the half-realized, unconscious inclinations of others beyond our realm, the afterthoughts and daydreams of gods. How could my people admit such fragility? Their deepest desire mirrored that of their creators. They wanted to live, and live well, in a universe trying to kill them. But none of those assembled were blind. They tired of attacks, of inexplicable and unpredictable malice heaped upon them. The people felt the boot on their collective throat, the hammer against their head, and they wished for no more than to deal unto their tormenters an equal measure of violence.
Kate Beckensale, closeup.
Whitaker reached for his attaché, placing it on the sofa beside him. He snapped it open, but before reaching in, gave Carlisle an interrogative look. "May I?" Without getting shot? "Please." He pulled out a raft of papers and piled them onto the table. He picked one out and offered it to her. "Yesterday, 0524GMT, a meteor entered the atmosphere and struck ground in central Wyoming, USA. Just outside the temporary home of subject of interest Fiona Street, formerly an Army major opconned to NSA–" "I know who she is." Carlisle sat the paper on the table and gave it a decisive tap. "What's more, you know I know her." "You've had multiple … altercations with Fiona Street. In both your freelance capacity and as a terrorist." "We were terrorists only because you labeled us as such. Honestly, we were doing your job for you." "A few hours earlier, two of Fiona Street's associates were involved in a gas explosion in a London flat. We have high confidence that the two were the French teleporter, Dior Guillaume, whom you've also met, and an unidentified NSA operative." He didn't hand her paperwork for that.
"Don't worry, no Metal. But this sixties folk crap is giving me facial ticks. How about a compromise?" His eyes grow larger, the lids peeling back. A watery sheen bubbles onto them. His lower lip starts to quiver. She leans over the entermatics readout. "It's a good one. You like it. You said you did, anyway." A steel-string guitar interrupts the Simon and Garfunkel melody. The woman flops back into her seat and raises her hands to grasp the back of her headrest. She listens for a while to the deep vocals and the twangy country-western instrumentals, then just has to sing along. "Benson Arizona, blew warm wind through your hair -- Sing it with me, Stan -- something something something some, my heart longs to be there--" A discordant, binging alarm, then "PROXIMITY ALERT! PROXIMITY ALERT! THANK YOU FOR OBSERVING ALL SAFETY PRECAUTIONS!" A BRILLIANT FLASH OF LIGHT. No, wait, calmer. A brilliant flash of light, then the blue-shifting sucks away into the distance to leave a field of white stars. The music cuts off abruptly. "PROXIMITY ALERT! PROXIMITY ALERT! PLEASE AVOID COLLIDING WITH OBSTRUCTING SPACECRAFT! THANK YOU FOR OBSERVING ALL SAFETY PRECAUTIONS!"
She finished her turn of the gun ring, gripped the weapon's trigger handles, then crouched and peered at the sky. "Vampires." Tully in his driver's chair, making the engine grumble. Dehholm standing at the station next to him, assault rifle slung across his chest while he prepped the secondary machine gun. Short in the bed hefting his SIG plus XPD. They all froze in their actions and pivoted their skeptical gazes toward Tilbrenner. "Vam-what?" Tully said. Then something lunged up at him from between his knees, from where his brake and accelerator pedals should be. Something gray, man-sized, long-armed, fingers crooked like claws. It grabbed at his chest and moaned like a fog horn. Tully screamed like a little girl. "Incoming!" Tilbrenner shouted with force enough to rake her throat, then slung her gun around to aim across the truck and up into the sky.
The actress Mackenzie Davis, short hair, blue eyes, looking side-eye at the viewer as if she's gonna kick their ass.
She leans forward to rest her elbows on the control surface and directs her gaze through the viewport. So beautiful and so dangerous, she thinks. A universe of opportunity. Also one of unbounded horror. But boredom, mainly. Mostly boredom. They'd been arrowing in FTL for something like seventy-three-- She squints to check the chronometer on the control surface. Yes, seventy-three hours. All to cover a coronation of frog people on a planet of scum. A story set to last four hours, then enough time to catch a shower. Except she doesn't think she'll shower on a planet of scum. Though, really, after seventy-three hours and more to come, she wouldn't get any scummier if she did. Life as a journalist is not all romance and Pulitzers, that's for sure.
"So," Jarhead said. He kept his eyes forward or to his flank. "Here we are. Third inbound." "For as long as this girl can handle it." "You think we dropped the first two loads anywhere near the zone? Because I couldn't see a thing. The smoke, they may as well have taped butcher paper over our windscreens." "Like the old days, night flying off a carrier." "Really?" "No. You can see stuff off a carrier. Stars, shit like that." "Then why–" "Wanted to make you feel better." "Thanks. You failed miserably." Jarhead peered at his tablet. "Watch your six. Got a fast mover coming up on our port side." "One of the guys out of formation?" "No. Looks like an Osprey. I thought their job was standby." "Unless Bugs changed the plan, that airplane spells things going from bad to worse. Maybe to worser." "Well, they're definitely putting the spurs to it. Transponder's squawking… It's Peekaboo." "Are we plenty clear? I don't want to get caught in her wash. Those things are little hurricanes." "She's a couple miles out. There! I got a visual." He pointed out his door plexi, as if Mac could see over there. "Bye-bye, Peekaboo…" He waved the fingers of one hand after her.
"You… You tell anybody about this…" she gasped, "and you're a dead man." "I won't." "A tortured, mutilated dead man, buried alive." "I won't." She cried, heaving, and Mac held her close. A minute or so, and it got uncomfortable. God stopped bawling, then her hitches and sobs began to dry up, then she grew gradually stiff in Mac's embrace. Mac was no dummy despite what she liked to claim; he knew when enough was enough. A quick two pats on her shoulder, then he released her and returned to his chair. She leaned back in her bed, folded her arms across her chest, and focused her gaze on the far wall of the tent. Awkward. "Umm, need a tissue?" Mac asked. "That would be good." He got up, went to the table down the middle of the tent, and snagged her a couple of Kleenexes from a box. She took them without looking at him and dabbed at her cheeks. Mac sat down. "So," he said, working hard to sound casual, borderline disinterested, and non-judgmental. "What was that?" "You tell anybody, you're a dead man." "Understood." "You even think about using it as leverage, you're a dead man." "Also clearly understood." He waited. Nothing came from her but a few deep breaths and sniffles. "So. What was that?" "That, Stalker, was a minor breakdown." "Really? From you?" "Well, who the hell you think it was, Jay Leno in a mask?" "Well, I just, you know… You're God."
From my reclined position deep in the well of the Crystal Palace, I observed the hundreds-strong assemblage of worried, fearful people, the envoys of all those living precariously in our world. The multitude made for a varied congregation. There were Nazis, Naked People, Heroes, Villains, random manufactured Friends, Family, and Sex Objects, all manner of thrills, terrors, and bland nothings dreamed by the creatures who had made our universe. The shining knights in their white and gold tabards, with their ornate swords in polished leather scabbards. The fairy princesses, both sensual and demure, in opulent gowns and ornate hair, their large eyes watery and defiled from recent worry. The black trolls, indistinct, little more than shadowed hulks with rocky shoulders and blazing red embers for eyes. Dragons perched on the flying buttresses that supported massive piers, themselves supporting nothing. Spiders crawled the mighty, refracting columns. And, towering over all, the writhing pillar of black smoke challenged me as a blade challenges flesh.
She leans away, her heart pounding like maracas in her chest. Where's this? The foredeck of a ship? Startled sailors, in the process of some task, drop what they're holding or pull too hard on levers and a steel hawser, inches thick and furry with metal thorns, snaps across the deck, anxious to slice the girl in half. Gripping the almost naked man by his collar, she leans. The middle of a gangbanger shootout. She leans. A construction site. A worker on the scaffolding notices the flash of her arrival. He turns to see what caused it and jams his steel-toed boot against a bucket of rivets. In surprise, he drops his rivet gun. It whangs once off an aluminum support and hurtles straight for the girl's face. What the hell is this? She leans. A grassy field. Thank God, safe at last. But birds scatter at her appearance, already edgy birds brought to the field on a freak wind out of a desert far away. They burst into the sky with a sound like flapping paper and squeaky wheels. Which alerts a lion under a tree thirty feet away. Feeling threatened, it charges. The girl takes her hand from the man long enough to show her palms and frustrated eyes to the heavens. Then she grabs the man's collar, and leans. This one takes a grain of time, long enough for a thought. That thought? You threaten me, bad things happen.
A peal of thunder blasted through the ship like a collapsing mountain. The cabin lit as though with a searchlight. "Okay, I've got it," Xena said, maybe to herself. The ship lurched up and to the left, and kept going. It shuddered. It quaked. It wobbled. Rain pounded its fuselage with a sound like a ball bearing avalanche. Mac tightened his lips more. He didn't want to bite his tongue or crack a tooth in the chopper's continuous convulsions. "Here's your best insertion, heading and altitude," Coast Guard guy said over the net. He didn't seem to talk to anyone, just leaned over his tablet, gripping it like a lifesaver. "Remember your distance from the center and give it some respect; the eye of the storm isn't yet coherent." "Coming into the pipe– Whoa!" The ship took a series of terrible punches. The engine noise grew shrill in tone and the aircraft pitched left to a frightening degree. "Lateral wind shear, right!" God called. "Elevate, elevate! Turn that nose!" Mac's skin crawled. It knew danger when it landed on him like a panther. He closed his eyes hard, and waited. The ship came back true. "Are we there yet?" Xena breathed. "Not even." God said. "That was just a microburst. We're trailing the storm now. Watch for heavy turbulence. Lightning. Tornado country here."
"Heads up!" Tilbrenner shrieked. "To your left!" Hostetter looked. What did she mean? Hundreds of vampires swooping out of the sky, running toward them across the ground, climbing up the side of the truck. Hard to know what to concentrate– "Your other left, dumbass! Duck!" He ducked. The machine gun barrel swept over his head, knocking his hat to the deck. He looked the way the gun turned and discovered the vampire right at his shoulder, tentacles large and reaching. Something jittered where the tentacles met. An eye? The machine gun barrel clobbered the demon, forcing it backward on stumbling legs until it fell beyond the gun's flash suppressor. Then Tilbrenner let loose a quick burst of bullets that atomized the vampire and took out an entire armored plate of the truck. The staccato gonging felt to Hostetter as if a hard man pounded him with a heavy board. He wrenched away and threw up an arm against the sparking metal and the slivers of steel that escaped it. The plate fell away to the ground, taking the three vampires grasping its metal slab. It probably crushed them like grapes under a brick. Twisting to get her arm under the gun ring, Tilbrenner grabbed Hostetter by the shoulder of his shirt and shook him. "Get your head in the game!" Then she was back to hammering away with her machine gun.
Covers of all my novels (for far!) Last Days and Times Isis Wept Shining Star Conqueror's Realm Fiona Street Redemption Song Galactic Geographic Bad Lands Uncivil Service Voice of the City Transporter A Light in the Black Black Door The Yellow Road Not Taken Guardians at the Gate
A flicker of movement. By the time Hostetter jerked his eyes back to the Tilbrenner woman, she stood almost nose to nose with him, clutching the jacket around her with one hand and gripping the gun ring with the other. A quick one, she was, and dexterous in the moving, shuddering truck. Foolish, though. Hostetter had a hand on the Colt at his hip. "Can you send me back?" the woman asked, her words strained through tightly clenched teeth. "I mean, back where I came from?" "You might want to back up a mite," Hostetter suggested. For a second, she seemed not to understand his words. But proximity was its own clue and she retreated a little, contrite, but still holding onto the gun ring. Hostetter relaxed his hold on the pistol grip, but kept his hand rested on the weapon.
"Oh, sorry." The Diamond stepped aside, the architectural support that kept her dress all poofy rustling as metaphorical pulleys pulled and crank arms cranked to bear and shift that multilayered mass. The thing was an abomination of overabundant materialism, enough satin, lace, silk, cotton, wire, fiberglass, thread, plastic, silver and aluminum to supply the natural resources needs of a third world country for years. What was this, the nineteenth century?
A weather map of the United States and Canada that shows, right now, 3:00pm 28 July, wildfires swarming over the western US and from northwest to southeast in Canada, plus a few in Florida and one up there in Alaska.
"It's just a roof," Mave added. "Or part of one, broken from its house and jammed against that tangle of trees. Take us closer." "I can't see from here," Mac said. "Talk me in." "Sidle left," Jarhead directed. "Yes. Left, left… Closing. Take it easy. You're fifteen feet off the roof. Drop five. Yes, yes…" Mac's arms strained. Finesse fought with the battery of the storm. Sweat dribbled down his forehead, streaming along the bridge of his nose. "Almost there," Jarhead said, his tone warning. "Keep it slow. In position in three, two, two, two…" "Natsuo," Mave called. "This one's your pleasure!" Her people rumbled around in the cabin, repositioning. "Gunner, you have the assist." "Two … one … there! Hold it there." "Unstable!" Mac yelled. "Mave, do what you gotta!" "Man away!" "Is he tied on?" "No line. Not for this." Hold steady." "I'm backing off. Call me back in when he needs me." "Yes. Be ready."
"Can I have one?" Tilbrenner asked with a bucketful of maniacism. "No!" all the men answered, Hostetter included. Tilbrenner went from wide-eyed glee to a sullen frown. Hostetter saw all manner of cussing forming behind her eyes, like black clouds muscling before a storm, so he thought it prudent to redirect the moment. "Them weapons are classified. But, more important, where did that slug thing come from?" He nailed Tilbrenner with a hard, appraising squint. "You knew what it was." That took her down a peg. Her eyes skipped from one man to the other. "Well, yeah. Don't you guys read?" "I told ya, there ain't no Galactic Geographic in this here world. This world, ain't nobody been farther afield than the moon." She stuck out her chin. The discussion was between her and Hostetter. "Then I guess you're lucky I'm not from this world." "Not so sure about that," he growled back, and tilted his hat back off his forehead. "'Cause we don't know nothin' about giant sand slugs, but we know some about nightmare monsters. They're dreams. Somebody gotta dream 'em." "Generally speaking, but not necessarily," Short corrected from behind his weapon. Hostetter ignored him. "There ain't but one person here who could o' dreamed up that thing."
She'd cornered him. She wouldn't say another word until he accepted her offer or turned her down. And he wouldn't turn her down, he knew this. Try as he did to find the trap, to uncover the insult, he could only see that the company needed him, that it had chosen him in trust. "See, now, you went and ruined a perfectly good bottle of sangria," he said. "I thought we agreed there'd be no more Stalker stuff." "I didn't." "Did so. As in I can't take a compliment." "You are aware that Stalker is your official callsign, aren't you?" "When on duty. If we're gonna do this thing, and we are gonna do this thing, that Stalker title shows up only on the flight line." "Hmm." "Also, there are other stipulations. I want a company car. I'm thinking a Rivian, one of those quad-motor jobs with the pickup bed and the high-end speakers. And an assistant, preferably tall, slim, and blonde. And no more unflattering monkey comparisons." "Hmm." "Perks, Ellen. Every job's gotta have its perks." "We can do … some of that." "All right. Then you've got a– Wait! More money!" "And maybe you'd like stock options?" "If you have some of that, sure." "It's a private company, Sta–Douglas." "Okay, okay. So, okay. You've got a deal." She smiled, and relaxed. "Right after we empty this bottle." "Celebration?" she asked. "Trying to see if I really can get you drunk." They went on like that, teasing and at once keeping a distance. Work stubbornly took up a bit more of their time together, mainly who Mac should coordinate with and how not to be a douche about it. Then she left him in the lobby of her hotel, all smiles and warm eyes, and she didn't even offer a good night kiss. Oh, well. Mac found solace in the newly learned lesson that sometimes friendliness was just friendliness and work was just work. Boy, was he becoming all grown up.
A black cat meowing really loudly, her mouth stretched wide and her eyes wide open from the effort.
His tone had changed, sharper, sprinkled with gravel. She decided not to joke anymore. "It isn't necessary, the two rooms, I mean. We could get a double, two beds. We could be grownups about it, like Spencer Tracy and Audrey Hepburn in that movie." "That was Clark Gable and Claudette Cobert. Also, that situation was awkward even for them. You'll want your privacy." "Privacy isn't that big of a deal." "And you'll want to fall asleep without worrying you made a mistake. Where I'm concerned." She opened her mouth to contest that statement, then closed it. Yes, she could see that being an issue. "Wait," Tim said, and coaxed the car onto the exit ramp, then right at the intersection, toward the yellow sign with the big "8" on it. "I'm doing this for you," he finished. "Oh. Well." Tim put on the signal and waited for an ancient pickup truck to trundle by in the opposing lane. When the way was clear, he turned into the half-empty parking lot of the motel. The Girl of Many Names felt a vague, building sickness in her gut. She had cost this total stranger over ninety bucks in clothes and was now about to set him back God only knew how much for a room he didn't have to pay for. This, and she thought she kind of liked him. Tim set the brake and switched off the ignition. He turned to her, and smiled. The gesture was genuine; it encompassed his whole face, not just the lips. "Coming?" he asked. "Well," she answered, "okay."
ARTEC Boxer APC, an eight-wheeled armored personnel carrier with a wedge-shaped front end. The wheels alone are nearly as tall as an average man.
Mil-26 Helicopter sitting beside a Bell Ranger, one of those helicopters hospitals use to transport critical patients. The Mil looks maybe 6 times as long and three times as tall. You could probably put several of the Bell Rangers inside the Mil.
"Questions," Phoenix said. "How much does that thing weigh?" "Where's the hospital you mentioned?" "I don't see any room for it." "Where do the people go?" Phoenix laughed then. But he went about methodically answering every question. The answers came down to an intricate 3-D puzzle of storage and an equally intricate unfolding procedure. The Mil was the world's largest and most complicated set of nesting dolls and took twenty minutes from touchdown to get the surgery up and running. Step one was wheeling that great, cantankerous APC down the ramp and out of the way. "But how did you even get this bird?" Xena called out when the cacophony of questions lulled. "I mean, it's Russian military inventory." "Stormbreak has leads into the Russian materiel command structure," Phoenix answered cryptically. "What?" Mac wondered. "Is Putin on the board of directors?" "Candidate Stalker–" "No, sir! No questions, sir!"
The aircraft on the launch circle revved its engines. Mac barely heard them through the scream of rain. Then the bird let its rotors go. They slashed at the storm, cutting through rain and wind to make their own weather. Sooner than Mac might have figured, the ship groaned upward, sidling a little, then leaned into the torrent and dragged upward into the curtain of gray. A slight buck, and he was mobile, the taxi dragging him toward center deck. Mac flipped switches and pressed buttons on the virtual dash. He blew up the weather radar, making it take over half his forward screen, then flexed his fingers on his control sticks. The daring of it all. The great, grisly, bared-teeth arrogance. The big boss risking his fortune and his people's lives to prove that disaster relief could turn a profit. It hadn't yet, but he had faith. The pilots and crews not caring about the business, set on the knowledge that people needed them, people in danger, and Stormbreak was gifted the means and the will to help. Maybe the business would work, maybe it wouldn't, but if the last few years had taught Mac anything, the only thing that mattered was the fight. Why worry that next year you might not have a job? Tomorrow you might be dead.
Cover for The Book of Needs, a mid-World Arts short story collection. Styled in the form of an illuminated manuscript, with floral or vine-like border decoration in gold. Also in gold, the title in a medieval kind of font. The whole cover seems pressed in gold into brown leather.
Quiet, there in the triforium. Seldom did anyone brave that dizzyingly high, narrow, dangerous passage, and never so late in the day, or in March, when the tourists were thin on the ground. Quiet, chilly. The sun didn't warm a stone edifice like this. But the colors did, at least in Deor's heart. Speckles of red, gold, and blue from the stained glass windows behind her, from the giant clerestory windows above her head, and from the glass circle radiating above the triple-doored main entrance to the church. Deor felt at peace here. At home. Closer to God. She settled onto the floor, her legs crossed beneath her. She tucked down the opening of her long skirt; the cold draft of that thousand-year-old church had decided to wind its way to her crotch. Why had she come there? Why did she ever? She had places to escape to. Her apartments in Virginia and Indiana, both paid for by Nightwatch. Fiona's house, but Fiona wasn't there anymore. Her father's house only a few kilometers from St. Denis. But she always came to the church. Because she knew God loved her. God didn't judge her. God saw only her soul, not her body. God would take her away some day and she'd be fully the girl her body should have manifested. Until then, she could rest in His house, in His arms, all her problems tiny in such a grand temple.
Cover for Dark Tales of the Mid-World. The tagline "A Mid-World Arts Harvest of Horror!" is written in blood on the dirty tile wall in the background. In the foreground is an old-timey television set with the title on screen, A human skull is laid on the table in front of the TV. A jack-o-lantern sits atop the TV.
"Computer lady, do you register any movement beyond this door?" It's safe. No need for concern. "You haven't given it a name? I mean, beyond computer lady?" "It's only the second time I've used it." Gary poised one ear near the door's surface. It's fine. "It's fine," Sally parroted. "There's no threat." "How do you know?" She raised her brows and half-rolled her eyes. "I know." "Oh." Gary pulled the several bolts free. One screeched as if he yanked on its broken bones. After giving Sally a look, seeming to ask if she were sure, he pried the door open against the ground clutter of wreckage. A fine dust filtered in, like the ash from a cooled fireplace. Past the threshold, the house lay in the dead light of evening, every item of furniture smashed, every window shattered, the French doors to the back yard swinging free of most of their hinges, buckled as if by a battering ram. The fridge had crashed face first onto the maltreated wood floor. And everywhere, the dust. Shoveled into piles, spilled as if through clumsiness, floating like a fog in the air. "Where are they all?" Gary asked. Sally gripped her stomach in sickly realization. "The dust," she said. "The ash. I think it's them." And she stood ankle deep in the stuff.
As Childress watched, a shadow formed in the heart of the event. A deep grumble rolled across the chamber, shaking the floor. Then, as if feeling blindly for support, a scaly leg thumped out of the orange pillar, slapping the floor with its clawed foot. The claws flexed and tore tile from the mangled ground. It was a big leg, a huge one, the muscled, armored leg of a dinosaur. Then the rest of the creature pushed into the world, and roared. "Shee-it!" Childress's legs turned to jelly and he collapsed to the floor. The others were right there with him, wailing in terror. The stench of piss and sour sweat blasted out from among them, but drowned almost immediately beneath the foul, rotten, dog breath of the beast out of the pillar. A dragon.
Cover for A Light in the Black. A dark-skinned hand brandishing a hunga-munga, a kind of short-handled war ax with multiple blade projections, a real nasty weapon as likely to harm its owner as it will its intended victim. In the middle ground, a spherical spaceship, like a crescent moon, approaching a background golden glowing rift in space.
"I'm not the Voice of the City," Gary said. Sally felt her mind blow. Flabbergasted he could say those words. She looked him up and down. The black supersuit, the boots, the fucking logoed utility belt, the mortar guns around both arms, the helmet with the red visor. "Well! You could've fooled me!" "No, you don't understand. Back last spring, when the thing at the children's hospital happened. He was wounded—" "You were wounded!" "He was wounded, so he made me take over. For a little while. This thing on my hand—" He slapped his wrist to indicate it, but the disk wasn't there. Of course it wasn't there. It was all over his body. "Oh. Well, he passed the Voice of the City to me. For a while." "For a while? A year and a half?" "A few minutes. Then it was over, and the machine went back into itself." "Wow…" Eulie drawled, and raised his fingers to Gary's belt buckle. Sally had been through a lot. She did not, as she had hoped, have it together. She vibrated from want of answers, of normalcy, of feeling she was safe. And she didn't make much progress toward that calm. "Look, I'm not stupid. A year and a half is not a few minutes. And that … stuff … isn't back into anything. It's all over you. So somebody in here'd better make some sense or I'll lose my fucking mind!" Gary, good old Gary, kept his tone level, didn't take any bait. "It's a little adhesive disk. The suit's inside of it. It worked for a few minutes, then it retracted inside itself. And stayed there until today." "Why today?" she tried to sound reasonable. "I tried to give it back to him, but he wanted me to keep it, to make sure you were safe. So I did."
Cover for Black Door. Lightning bolts crack around an arched doorway. A soldier in full combat gear stands before the doorway, reaching out toward it with one hand, the other clutching his assault rifle.
Cover art for Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov
Silvestri isn't convinced. He again moves toward the man, but with caution, his hands in full view. Stupid, arrogant, American, armyman asshole, she thinks. She heaves more breath through adrenalized lungs, grits her teeth, and balances her hands against her trembling knees. She should lean over there and lean Silvestri out. For his own good. But he really is a soldier and she is not. He has courage and she does not. He knows who he is and she does not. She stays where she is. "Deor, get over here and help!" "Nuh-uh!" She stays where she is. "Then get on the horn and get us transportation before the cops arrive!" He's over there skulking toward the man, the man wearing a bloody shirt and no pants, and Silvestri is done with scared little teenagers taller than him. All right. Fine. She'll stay where she is. Distance is divine. She rummages into her raincoat pocket for her phone. Sure, she'll call as long as she doesn't come a hair's breadth closer to that strange little man with no pants. That weird wizard commander of brick walls, buses, cars, trucks, and lions. That magnet of misfortune. She touches the contact for Nightwatch local control. She'll give them an earful about Bad Luck Bob.
A public sculpture in Indianapolis. A metal ring approximately 20 ft. high and embedded in concrete buttresses at the bottom It stands in a public courtyard.
Cover for Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
Cover for Guardians at the Gate. Shows the tagline A Dark Satire on the Plight of Public Education. A man in brown trousers, long-sleeved white shirt (sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows) and a tie patterned after Van Gogh's Starry Night, a lanyard around his neck with a STAFF tag hanging from it. He seems to block entrance to a school building while holding a pamphlet of Kant's A Critique of Pure Reason in one hand, other copies scattered at his feet. Just behind him, a woman in a blue workout suit -- she's also wearing a STAFF lanyard -- smirks at him with amusement. She has short brown hair and is wearing blue-tinted sunglasses. On the schoolhouse door is plastered a notice that reads Condemned due to Low Standardized Test Scores!
"What are you doing?" someone asked, and it was then that she realized her shoes were in her hand and her right knee was on the sill. She froze there a moment, unsure what her answer should be, then grinned. Would it kill you to smile every once in a while? "Just getting some air. Be right back." She was out the window, onto the slanting, oddly slick surface of the roof. She tried to walk down, her arms thrown out for balance, but quickly had to drop to her bottom and scoot to the next level, and to the next. There, ten feet from the ground, she heard the entreaties of the girls at her back, shrill whispers in the name of conformity, cogent arguments that normality was threatened. The dress was a hindrance. Half the time it puffed up before her like a girly parachute. A few times it caught on the edges of shingles. When she leapt to the patio it flew up around her. Unable to see anything but satin, she landed on one foot and rolled ignominiously onto her side. She lay there a moment, astonished at herself. The whispered panic of the girls drove her on. She couldn't make out their arguments now, but their tone hadn't changed, and threatened her. She was a sheep outside the fold. Come back, come back, where the wolves can find you. But she refused to be a sheep anymore.
Cover for The Yellow Road Not Taken. Dorothy in a hoodie, carrying her pig, the Scarecrow, the Metal Man, and the Cowardly Lion looking on.
Cover art for Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The HMT (High Mobility Truck) Extenda, a six-wheeled, open cabbed, armored truck that looks like a half-stripped wreck. It has no silhouette, multiple lateral and crossover roll bars, seats four, two each in separated passenger compartments, one forward and one behind. It has a flatbed for hauling troops or equipment, and two machine guns, one at the front passenger position and one in an elevated platform offset from center between the front and back passenger areas. That elevated (primary) machine gun is situated within a rotating barely-there turret, the gun resting in a trace, or gun ring, that surrounds the gunner and allows them to fire in any direction.
It was cadaverous, like gases out of a week-dead deer. It was starved, like a long wait on time. It radiated need. "What was that?" Tully asked, his voice hollow and thin. "Hey, spooky spy guy!" Tilbrenner snapped to Short. "Be a pal and pass me another can of ammo for this gun." Short didn't argue. He ducked under the row bar and rummaged in the bed. "You know what that is." Hostetter held his stick at shoulder level in the cramped space of the passenger area. Maybe he should hustle back to where Short was busy. More room to maneuver in that flat bed. The awful roll of sickly howls continued, sometimes at the edge of hearing, sometimes a flutter of bat wings behind the head. "Come on, come on, come on. Ammo, ammo, ammo." Tilbrenner urged with her fingers, her hands stretched out to receive the metal boxes Short wrestled toward her. She didn't look at him; her eyes searched the sky like a rabbit's after hawks. "Chief Tully," Dehholm called, his tone as calm as a pond without wind, "your rifle, please. And, if you will…" "Yes, sir, Way ahead of you." Tully tossed his rifle to the officer and dropped into his driver's seat. The truck cranked up, shuddering and belching black smoke. "What we got comin', Tilbrenner?" Hostetter mimicked her scan of the sky. Tilbrenner secured two ammo boxes from Short. Ignoring Hostetter's question, she crammed one onto the floor of her machine gun nest and expertly clamped the other to the loading cradle alongside the weapon and threaded the belt onto the feed tray. She slapped closed the tray cover and spun the gun along its ring to maybe get the feel of it. If she was from outer space, how did she know about machine guns? "Hey!" Hostetter roared, more to be heard above the building moans, but also out of frustration with that woman. "What we got, Tilbrenner?" She finished her turn of the gun ring, gripped the weapon's trigger handle, then crouched and peered at the sky. "Vampires."
Cover image for Transporter. The Eiffel Tower at night in the background. In the foreground, an angular-faced feminine character with long, brunette hair. Wearing a black leather jacket thrown over her shoulders. Also wearing all black otherwise. A blue aura emanates from around her head.
Cover art for The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
"I thought when I started out this afternoon that this would be a lonely trip. Thanks to you, it hasn't turned out that way." She stopped devouring her moon pie. What he said, that had been sweet. It was so sweet, she almost forgot what name she was going by. Then she realized the further implications of his words. "Why, Tim. Does that mean you want me along for your whole trip?" She hadn't asked the question to guile him, beguile him, or toward any other nefarious or sadistic purpose. That's how the words came out, though, and he squirmed in his seat upon hearing them. "I wasn't trying to say..." he began, and didn't seem to be going anywhere else. "I wasn't trying to catch you up," she rushed to say. "I was just surprised." She thought about that. The remains of the moon pie, all crumpled cellophane and bits of yellow cake and chocolate dust, became the object of her quick, blank stare. Then she looked up, and picked her words carefully. "I was taught ... that the things men get into are the clothes, poise, the right makeup, the right body. Men like a charmer, but one that isn't too smart, not smarter than them, anyway. And who knows her place, which is with his arm around her waist. And who laughs at his jokes." She stared at his green and shadowed profile. "So, someone like me, looking like I look, acting all rude, lying to you, taking your stuff, not exactly appreciative... How do you find that entertaining?" "What, like am I into being dominated or something? No. You're just not like other girls." He waved away his own words. "No, it's more like, all those things you mentioned about looks and charm and sucking up to your man, I don't have time for that crap anymore, if I ever did." "Wow. I'm sitting in a car with a grownup."
Cover for A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Cover for Voice of the City. Illuminated buildings of a city at night in the background. In the foreground, a muscled man in a black, skintight costume, wearing a helmet with a red visor across his eyes. He's wearing a utility belt with a blue buckle, the skyline of the city etched across it.
"All right. Passing you control. You have control." "I have control?" "You have control." And then he had control, control of a bucking bronco on PCP. A drugged-up bronco that somebody fired cannons at. And beat with house-sized boulders. "Altitude," Coast Guard said. "Barometric pressure's erratic. But you can assume it's lower beneath your rotors." Mac didn't respond. He was too busy straining his muscles to bring the ship up before it smashed into the sea. Then he fought an insistent pressure against his cyclic, the wind shouldering the aircraft off to the right. "Watch your track." God kept her tone uncharacteristically even, which scared Mac half to death. "Look at your track. It's all right. Nothing's gonna happen in the split second you look. You're going off-track. Get back on track." "The goddamned wind," Mac said through his teeth. "Don't fight it. Use your pedals. Turn into it. There you go." "Airspeed," Coast Guard coached. "Check your track," God clarified. "When you regained altitude, you put on speed. You're almost to a new band of the storm. You go in there, you'll hit turbulence. Back off airspeed, but maintain altitude." Mac drew minutely back on the cyclic and lowered his collective a tick. "Good, good. Maintain track. Watch wind direction. Stay in the pipe." It went on like that for God only knew how long, no pun intended. Up, down, slewing right, slewing left, rotating, backing off, driving on. The flight felt like a rollercoaster ride, but the rollercoaster grew slowly more predictable, incrementally less scary. "I can't believe it," Mac said after a while. "I'm surfing a thunderstorm." God: "Honey, this isn't the storm. You're barely on the storm's doorstep."
Cover art for Uncivil Service. Text reads: Stephan Michael Loy's FIONA STREET UNCIVIL SERVICE (the 'L' in UNCIVIL is stylized as a silhouetted Beretta semi-automatic pistol). Silhouette of a woman holding a pistol in one hand, a flash of red light at her neck. A black cat lounges atop the 'N' in UNCIVIL, a red light at its neck, too
Cover for Contact by Carl Sagan
Short clanked something against the top of the roll bar, the ugly, angular assault rifle he had carried to the woman's space-torpedo-delivery-thing, its ungainly black cylinder slung beneath its barrel. He threw one arm across the top of the weapon to steady it and squeezed a trigger at the bottom of the cylinder, setting up the wooing sound again. Another stream of light from the cylinder, Short waving it around for wide coverage of the water bear's body. It was like a clown-sized version of one of those big police flashlights, one of those maglights, except this one tore that monster apart like a pig tears through victuals. In an instant, they went from cowering in the shadow of a beast from hell to … to nothing. Blue sky above. A little sand clicking against their skin. "Driver, stop!" Denholm shouted, and Tully let the HMT ease itself to rest. "Mister Short! What the blazes was that?" Tilbrenner, gripping the gun ring as if she might rip it from its mount, snarled "I told you—" Denholm slashed the air in front of her. "You! Silence! Short!" "That was one of our friends from the Nightmareverse," Short yelled as if speaking idly over the sound of city traffic. "And this, if you don't know…" He held out his weapon. "…is a United States issue SIG MCX assault rifle, but it's equipped— No, no, captain let me finish in one breath. It's equipped with an M11 Phase Discombobulator, what our boys call an XPD." "A what?" Tully asked dumbly, standing at his driver's seat and blinking. "It's the most effective weapon we have against nightmare monsters. The only one, really. Comes in several convenient sizes." "What?" Tully asked again. "A fucking ray gun?" Tilbrenner said, her tone rising toward joy. "You guys! I'm warming up to you!"
Cover art for Into the Out Of by Alan Dean Foster
Cover for Bad Lands. Black and white. An old codger in a duster, wide-brimmed cowboy hat, and double six-guns is drawing one gun while holding a long walking stick in the other hand. The walking stick glows blue, yellow, and red at the tip, the only color element in the art. The tagline, near the bottom of the cover, is: A Western That Ain't Quite Right
She should have felt a deep sense of pride, if not pride then at least su-periority. But all she felt before the floor length mirror was a sense of em-barrassment at the stupid white satin gown, her strapless white satin gown with the tiny, golden ivy motifs fluttering across her bust and down like rain to the wide, wide hem. And there were the stupid white gloves and the mother of all stupidity, the stupid damned embarrassing tiara sparkling atop her built-up hair. She didn't look bad in the getup. Oh no, if any boys had passed nearby, they would have stepped on their tongues as they did so. She looked good despite her allergy to exercise and her particular affec-tion for ice cream and Ho-Hos. Smooth shoulders and a long, thin neck. Round, deceptively innocent face and big, big anime eyes beneath all that dark, almost black hair. She owned a spare enough figure that she could wear anything, but one ample enough that men never talked to her face. It was all good, but it was all accidental. Could she help it if she'd won the gene pool lottery?
Cover for William Gibson's Virtual Light