When Life Doesn’t Matter

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 02:00:00 GMT

The night of the fight, Tamiko met Mere in the locker room before the  fight. Mere thought she’d come to walk her to the cage, like most  managers did, but then saw Tamiko's face.
“I just got a call from  Daniel,” Tamiko explained. “He said Aeron was a warning. Next time  they’ll call the police instead of leaving it there for us to find.”
“Next time?” Mere asked. “What did he say he would do?”
“I’ve got a lot of androids,” Tamiko answered. “He said he wants you to lose the fight tonight. Let Collin knock you out.”
“Is that what you want?” Mere asked.
“No,”  Tamiko answered. “But the security at the Imperial-Asia is too good for  me to get anyone near him. It’s up to you. Either way, he could just  frame me again. It’s not like his word is worth anything.”
Tamiko got  up to leave, and then paused and turned back to Mere. “He did offer  50,000 naira if you take the dive. I’m mean, 50,000 for you.” She turned  and left without saying anything else.
50,000 naira? Mere was only  going to be paid 10,000 if she won. But Daniel’s word really didn’t mean  anything. Losing to Collin Zhang could kill her career, and she’d just  be left with the 2500 naira the loser was going to be paid. She decided  to win. Tamiko could afford the best lawyers. Besides, Danial had killed  Aeron and all those other androids, just to send a warning? Over a  hundred androids had been killed for a warning?
As she pushed her way  through the crowd, she realized it was far more packed than it usually  was, but then again, she wasn’t an opening fight anymore. Most of the  fight-fans apparently didn’t show up until the opening fights were over.  Collin was in the cage waiting as she stepped in. The cage door closed,  the light turned red, and he advanced.

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Life in Tartarus

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 02:00:00 GMT

It had finally happened! After almost a decade of waiting it was here,  well, the other side of the planet, but close enough! War! Shahzad  Ebrahimi had been dreaming of the next war since the last one ended, and  he knew exactly who he was going to kill first. That fat Mexican that  worked at Materfer VacTube that was always leering at him. He had only  gotten the delivery job so he would have access to the important  Sudamericans, and now the time had come.
He wished he could just  blow up the entire Materfer Complex, but there was no way he could get  his hands on explosives, or the components to build explosives. He was a  Persian, living in a Sudamerican occupied colony, where  non-Sudamericans had extremely limited rights and no rights to weapons  of any kind. The Persians had been there first before the Sudamericans  had laid claim to their colony and deployed their lanceros to occupy it.  But that didn’t matter, not now. Now he’d have to settle for shooting  that fat Mexican, and whoever else he could before they took him down.
He’d  rather believe he could survive somehow, escape to fight another day,  to kill another day. But that was fantasy. The Sudamericans would kill  him, almost immediately. At least he could get access to the Materfer  Complex, that was more than most Persians had, other than that traitor  that worked for them. He’d shoot him too if he had the chance.

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Frozen Sky

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 02:00:00 GMT

The insulation of the thermal-suit was good as well, she couldn't feel  the icy air touching any part of her skin, but after an hour or so, a  cold ache set into her arms, and then her feet, and then legs. By the  time she reached the airship the ache had spread up her back, and the  Cyber Heads-Up Display implanted in her eyes was reporting mild  hypothermia. She suddenly realized she had been running through the  darkness, and wondered if Cheng could have even made the journey without  waving around a light that would have let everyone on the airship know  he was coming. Did the Confederacy implant its troops this CHUDs?
She  knew she should have just flown back to Hangtian with Cheng. That was  all that was required. Find the missing strato-freighter and report its  location. But this was an American airship, and she was going to be  damned if she let a bunch of rebels rescue it. America might have lost  the war against these Eco-Rebels on Mars, and America might have fallen  to its own eco-revolution back home, but damn it, America could still  rescue its own ships!

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A Long Night in Hell

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 02:00:00 GMT

The ride down the elevator to Agni Mining Station was like a ride into  Hell itself. On a planet where you could never quite get warm enough, it  quickly became uncomfortably warm, then uncomfortably hot. G. Drew  Akers had been in deep mines before, he'd worked in one for two years in  Hussy Crater in his early twenties. He'd decided then that he never  wanted to return to one, fortunately, he wouldn't be in this one long.  But that mine in Hussy had only been two kilometers below the surface of  Mars, this mine was almost twelve. At the mine in Hussy he rode an  elevator like this one twice each day, but here the miners lived below.  Agni Mining Station was a small self-contained town at the bottom of the  elevator shaft. He reached up and wiped the sweat from his brow. He'd  only been in the elevator a few minutes, and already his clothes were  soaked with sweat, and he was developing a headache. He opened his  jacket hoping the sweat would evaporate, and in the process exposed the  butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster.

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Species of Sociopaths

Sat, 02 Jan 2021 02:00:00 GMT

Galatea could see a physiological response in the steward, her heartbeat  and breathing slowed, she was becoming calmer. Galatea found it curious  how quickly the human-mind latched onto even the faintest hope of  survival. The odds of any of them surviving the night were incredibly  low, her odds weren't much better. She would need to salvage as many of  them as possible if she had any hope of surviving until a rescue ship  could be dispatched. If it was dispatched immediately a rescue airship  could take several days to reach them in this remote area. She would  have to give the humans the thing they called 'hope,' she would need to  lie to them.

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Sweat and Blood

Sat, 26 Dec 2020 02:00:00 GMT

For Artemio it had never been about winning, it had always been about surviving. He didn't know if he could beat Mudiwa Kachote in a fair fight, in fact, he doubted he could, but it didn't matter because he could survive a fight with Mudiwa. It was hard-wired into him. For Chichi it had always been about winning, and Chichi always won. Chichi knew she would win against Artemio, he was just a fighter, she was Multan itself. It didn't matter if Mudiwa was or wasn't a better fighter than Artemio, by the time Artemio got into the cage, he would be in no condition to fight Mudiwa. Yousaf's perspective was different, he hadn't been a winner in more than a decade. He had a good gig and made a lot of money working for Chichi, but those weren't his wins, they were losses. Chichi had once been a competitor and had screwed him over when he proposed they jointly form a fighting league in Multan. He was from Multan and knew the revolutionaries would ban the fighting leagues if they won the war. Every win she had was ashes in his mouth.

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Desert Rangers

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 02:00:00 GMT

Gabriel considered the question for a couple of seconds before answering. It was something he didn't like to think about. "The Echusian Desert Rangers audited over 45,000 Arreola plants last season. I can't see how there could be over 10,000 less this year." Ferderand wasn't quick to respond either, he hadn't thought about the blowback on the Echusian Desert Rangers. "I hadn't considered that," he finally stated. The meaning was clear enough to both of them. Gabriel had been an Echusian Desert Ranger last season, and now he was responsible for a purchase that ended up falling short by 15,000 plants. To someone that didn't know him, it could look like a scam. He could be charged with capitalism, one of the few crimes in the Confederacy that warranted the death penalty.

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Loyal Soldier

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 02:00:00 GMT

General Rome waited until the mercenaries were in the airlock before jumping to his feet and grabbing his duster and respirator mask. "I'll be back," he said to the waitress as he ran to the door into the motel. He swung the duster over his shoulders as he stepped into the lobby airlock, then pushed the respirator mask to his face as he hit the button for the outer airlock door. As he stepped out into the swirling sand, he pulled the strap of the respirator mask over the back of his head, and the mask pressurized. Across the lot, a vehicle had just landed. All Rome could see through the sand were the lights, but based on their spacing it had to be a truck or a bus.

He saw the shapes of the mercenaries moving around near the pub's airlock and ran out into the sandstorm at a right angle to the vehicle so the mercenaries wouldn't see him. When he couldn't see them anymore, he curved back towards the vehicle. It was a bus, a long-range transport, the type usually used to connect smaller settlements to major hubs. Someone was climbing out, several people. General Rome ducked under one of the short wings that supported the turbofans, and crept up behind the new arrivals, he couldn't see the mercenaries anywhere. Rome pulled out his pistol and dagger but left the dagger's plasma-blade turned off as the light would immediately alert everyone to his presence.

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King of Mars

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 06:49:01 GMT

Eve started to laugh. She was standing in her home of the past decade, an airship that might as well be dead. The only way she could get it functional again was to make it back to the colony, across sand-pits that could swallow her whole, and then get the neural processor back from Tadeusz before it starved to death, and before the algae in the airship's oxygen recyclers and fuel-cells starved.

From somewhere inside her there came a deep swell of emotion, and she screamed. Some of it was from the loss of her husband. Some of it was fear of these terrible people. Some of it was just anger. But most of it was a nameless emotion, something primal, the feeling that an animal might have when after being chased into a corner, it turns to attack its predator. That emotion when not only does it need to fight, but a switch in its mind has been thrown and now it wants to fight.

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