Best of Beyond the Stars Read online

  Contents

  The stories herein...

  The Epsilon Directive (David Bruns)

  Hanging with Humans (Patrice Fitzgerald)

  The Good Food (Michael Ezell)

  Venatoris (G. S. Jennsen)

  Hope 91 (Nick Webb)

  Sequester (Ann Christy)

  Escape from Push Station 16 (S.M. Blooding)

  War Stories (Samuel Peralta)

  Just an Old-Fashioned Lust Story (Christopher J. Valin)

  A Pool of Uncountable Eddies (Jeff Seymour)

  Tabitha’s Vacation (Michael Anderle)

  Carindi (Jennifer Foehner Wells)

  The Immortals: Anchorage (David Adams)

  Containment (Susan Kaye Quinn)

  Rendezvous (Joseph Robert Lewis)

  Call for Submissions

  Acknowledgments

  About Ellen Campbell, Editor

  Copyright

  What readers are saying about the Beyond the Stars series:

  “Great stories, great writers, and a blisteringly good collection.”

  “Every story is like opening a door into a new world. Will read everything in this series I can get my hands on.”

  “These stories are full of great, complex characters (not all of them human), twists and turns, and fantastic world-building.”

  “This collection has a heady brew of tales.”

  “I don’t often like every story in an anthology, but I did in this one, even though the stories were quite different.”

  “I finished this anthology in less than a day and I was sad because I wanted more.”

  “Great book that entertained and left me thinking. Thanks for the chance to discover these new worlds!”

  Beyond the Stars

  Space Opera Anthologies

  DARK BEYOND THE STARS

  BEYOND THE STARS: A Planet Too Far

  BEYOND THE STARS: At Galaxy’s Edge

  BEYOND THE STARS: New Worlds, New Suns

  BEST OF BEYOND THE STARS

  UPCOMING

  BEYOND THE STARS: Unimagined Realms

  Best of

  Beyond the Stars

  a space opera anthology

  Patrice Fitzgerald, Series Editor

  Astral Books

  an imprint of

  eFitzgerald Publishing, LLC

  The stories herein...

  The Epsilon Directive (David Bruns)

  In the aftermath of the war, Eraser Squads were formed for one reason: to rid the universe of every last Scythian. When Tom, a reluctant Marine, tracks down a lone Scythian being harbored by a group of human conscientious objectors, his instincts clash with his orders.

  Hanging with Humans (Patrice Fitzgerald)

  It’s time for The Zeldar Show, where the audience tunes in every day to watch the wacky host send someone to an alien planet. Today’s contestant is Glendorp Freundzap, a young Zeldarian who is thrilled to be headed for an exotic little planet called Earth. There he’ll be taking part in a classic human ritual known as the high school prom.

  The Good Food (Michael Ezell)

  In a far corner of the galaxy, uninhabited Seed World Four-Seven-Alpha experiences a loss of plant life that can’t be explained by satellite imagery. When a deep space Marine Scout and his modified K9 are ordered to investigate, they discover something that calls into question the term “uninhabited.”

  Venatoris (G. S. Jennsen)

  When Alexis Solovy—space explorer, freelance scout, recalcitrant wanderer—lands the contract of a lifetime, the race is on to claim the prize. Now she must not only outrun but outsmart her rivals to uncover the secrets of an ancient, mysterious pulsar. For deep in the void, far beyond the reach of civilization, wealth and renown matter little absent the ultimate reward: survival.

  Hope 91 (Nick Webb)

  A child leaves Earth aboard a NASA spaceship, one of the few chosen to settle a new world thousands of lightyears away. With only a few robots as companions and decades of space travel ahead of him, the boy soon learns there is another space traveler nearby in another ship, and will do whatever it takes to talk to her. To see her. To console her. To laugh with her.

  And hopefully, against all odds, to love her.

  Sequester (Ann Christy)

  When humanity loses control of the Earth to a foe of their own making, their last hope lies on Mars. But can they take off before the enemy stops them... and what will they find if they get there?

  Escape from Push Station 16 (S.M. Blooding)

  Domino is going to escape. The largest armada they’ve seen in eight years is about to pass by. The clock is ticking and she’s not missing this opportunity. Live or die, she is getting off this station.

  War Stories (Samuel Peralta)

  You don’t really want to hear about war. You want to hear about courage and honor. You want the medals, the bugles, the drums. You want to hear about starships on fire off Orion’s shoulder, plasma beams glittering as they slice through their inertial drives. I’m sorry. This isn’t that story.

  Just an Old-Fashioned Lust Story (Christopher J. Valin)

  When the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter decides to help his target spend her husband’s money instead of doing his job, his employer sends the next five best scumbags after them both. As one would imagine, bloodshed ensues. Can even the best of the best survive against such odds and still protect the woman he lo—uh, lusts after?

  A Pool of Uncountable Eddies (Jeff Seymour)

  Nobody knows how deep it is, because the monks won’t let anyone measure. But it isn’t the pool on planet Belladox that Efie is there to study. It’s the eddies.

  Tabitha’s Vacation (Michael Anderle)

  Tabitha, a Queen’s Ranger and follower from before the Queen left Earth to take the fight to the Kurtherians, is sick. She’s sick of being bored.

  It has taken Tabitha and her team thirty years to get her assigned system to be good—mostly—with the idea of law and order. Her boss understands that she needs a vacation. One that doesn’t involve just lying around on the beach and sipping fruity drinks. And he knows the right place to send her... Bectal’s World, your typical planet of scum and villainy.

  Carindi (Jennifer Foehner Wells)

  Stranded in a ship orbiting a dying red giant, E’Pio is alone and without hope—until she discovers the child, Carindi. Despite being of two different species, the two form a bond and build a life together. But that life will be a short one unless they can find a way to get their ship in motion. The star they orbit is about to go supernova.

  The Immortals: Anchorage (David Adams)

  Recruited into the mysterious Synapse Foundation, Nicholas Caddy—still bearing the scars of an interstellar war—is dispatched on his first mission with the Immortals. A passenger liner, the Anchorage, has gone silent. Their task is simple: find the ship, salvage what they can, report what happened. Simple.

  Containment (Susan Kaye Quinn)

  The Mining Master of Thebe is all alone... not counting the scavenger drones, foundry nanites, and magtread tractors buzzing across the tiny Jovian moon. So when a spindly tower of rocks mysteriously appears at the pole, it’s enough to vex the Mining Master’s machine-sourced intelligence like dust trapped in a harvester joint. Reporting it could mean reassignment to the Outer Belt... but probing the mystery further threatens to unlock something that might have been better left... contained.

  Rendezvous (Joseph Robert Lewis)

  When a typical workday in space is interrupted by someone... something... that insists on getting to know you, you just have to step up as the one and only representative of the human race. All in all, it’s a pretty strange rendezvous.

  The Epsilon Directive
<
br />   by David Bruns

  THE PROTESTERS CALLED us ‘genocide squads.’ The military designated us as Epsilon Units. But inside the Corps we called ourselves ‘Erasers.’

  Names aside, everyone agreed that we existed for only one purpose: to kill Scythians. Every last one of them.

  And we were good at our job.

  By the time I was drafted, the war was in the mop-up stages. I’d grown up hearing about the great fleet battles and how my siblings fought with honor. I’ll never really know since none of them came back. Still, war was the family business, a proud tradition of military service that went back generations. The day I turned eighteen, the admiral‌—‌my father‌—‌made me pancakes for breakfast then took me to the local armory to enlist.

  The proudest day of my life‌—‌his words, not mine.

  I can still recall my feelings as I filled out the draft form. Dread, fear... and ultimately, shame. My finger hovered over the check box labeled CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR, while my father joked with the Marine recruiter about the new uniform regs. I tried to force my finger to touch the screen, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I signed the dotted line and shoved my fists into my pockets instead.

  My father wore his uniform that day so he could administer the oath. He shook my hand afterward. “Your brothers would be so proud of what you’re about to do.”

  I put my fists back in my pockets and made a noise that I suppose he took as agreement.

  That’s the short version of how I came to be riding in the back of Fury, a Revenge-class assault craft, as a member of Eraser Seven. Normally, a ship of this size would carry six armored and battle-loaded Marines, but it’d been modified for Epsilon sweep missions. We carried three Marines plus a pilot and provisions for two weeks in space.

  Our mission was pretty simple‌—‌just the way Marines like it. After the fleet battles broke the back of the Scythian forces, the enemy scattered like rats all over the known galaxy. We were there to find the survivors and kill them. Simple.

  Our job was made so much easier when the United Earth Federation, following the massacre at Delphi, voted to suspend the Geneva Convention for the balance of the Scythian War.

  “Entering orbit around Talos 5,” Mambo called back to me from the cockpit, not bothering to use the intercom. The pilot’s real name was Gwyneth, but she insisted we call her Mambo, even off duty. “Light ‘em up, Noogie.” It says something about Marines that I’d been a part of this Eraser Squad for a year and they still called me ‘noogie,’ short for “new guy.”

  I grumbled to myself as I booted up the Zeron unit. Specially modified to search for Scythian life signs, the Zeron allowed us to scan planets for the enemy from high orbit, giving one Eraser Squad the capability to search an entire solar system in only a few weeks.

  The Talos system was well outside settled space, and so far, devoid of any humanoid life forms, including Scythians. Talos 5‌—‌this system was so far off the beaten path that no one had even bothered to name the planets‌—‌was our last stop before we headed back to the rendezvous point. We’d eaten all the decent freeze-dried meals, and the air had taken on a taint of recycled ozone that clung to the back of my throat.

  I connected my sensor package with the ship’s nav system. “Commencing scan, Mambo.”

  She raised her hands from the controls. “She’s all yours, Noog.” The ship banked gently as it entered a preset search pattern. I settled back in my seat and crossed my arms. For a planet this size, a full scan took about eighteen hours.

  On the other side of the Zeron, Hercules stirred in his bunk. Standing close to two meters tall in his socks, Hercules was easily the most deadly human I’d ever met. During my first week on the job, when enemy contact was still pretty common, I’d seen him rip the armored carapace right off a Scythian soldier’s face and kill the alien with his bare hands. Hercules had one mission in life: to kill Scythians. Not for the first time, I wondered what all these Marines were going to do when they disbanded the Erasers. The rumors were rampant that this was our last run. I hoped so‌—‌although I’d never say it out loud to this crew.

  Hercules flexed his massive biceps and ripped out a long, vibrating fart that would take the atmospheric scrubbers at least thirty minutes to dispel.

  “For love of Mike, Hercules. Go in the can if you’re gonna do that!” Gunnery Sergeant Madeline Jolly threw a shoe across the cabin that bounced off Hercules’ quivering pecs.

  “Sorry, Gunny.” Hercules hung his head. “It just slipped out.” Mambo feigned choking in the front of the ship.

  Gunny peered over the Zeron, fixing her flat, gray stare on me. “How’s it going, Noog?”

  I pretended to make an adjustment to the system, uncomfortable as always in her gaze. “Nothing yet, Gunny. It looks like this run might be a goose egg.” I attempted a smile.

  She slitted her eyes. “They’re out there. I can smell them.”

  The only thing I smelled was the inside of Hercules’ colon, but I just nodded, glad to have her turn her attention away from me. If you met Gunnery Sergeant Jolly as a civilian, you might think she was someone’s middle-aged mother. Looks are deceiving. Despite the unfortunate surname of Jolly, the woman had all the emotional warmth of an arctic sunrise. Gunny was the heart of Eraser Seven, a legend in the Corps. In three years on the job, she’d lost only one team member‌—‌the sensors guy that I replaced. I guess the fact that they still called me New Guy after a year meant I was never going to measure up to my predecessor.

  I went into sensors thinking that I’d serve out my enlistment far from the killing. A nameless drone on a fleet battleship somewhere, patrolling empty space. In training, I studied hard, finishing at the top of the class. They neglected to tell us that the top three students in each class were assigned to Epsilon Units.

  That was my life: closet conscientious objector turned draftee with a front row seat to some the most brutal slaughter of aliens you could ever imagine.

  Nearly two hours later, the Zeron chirped. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gunny’s gray bob snap up like a bird dog on point. We were passing over the mid-latitudes, and the signal showed up next to a large body of water. “Gunny, I got a hit!”

  I took manual control and refined the scan. Six humanoids, with one bright trace that indicated a Scythian presence. A second, fainter Scythian trace popped up, then disappeared.

  “Looks like five humans and one Scythian,” I said.

  “What the hell are they doing all the way out here?” Hercules asked. “Hostage situation?”

  Gunny stood behind me, close enough that I could smell the stale sweat on her uniform. When I looked up, she was pinching her lips between her fingers. “Let’s go check it out.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Good work, Noogie. Feed the coordinates to Mambo and let’s go hunting.”

  * * *

  Sometime in the second decade of war, an organized movement of conscientious objectors called The Society emerged across the United Earth Federation. By that point, it was pretty clear we were going to win the war and The Society advocated for an end to the draft and peace negotiations with the Scythians. I knew about The Society because I’d done a ton of research on them‌—‌secretly, of course‌—‌and even attended a few meetings. I’d even made a pledge to become a member when I turned eighteen. We know how that ended.

  So when we approached the walled compound on Talos 5, I knew exactly what the five-sided bronze bell hanging from a post meant. This was a Society outpost.

  “What’s that?” Hercules raised the eyescan on his helmet and tapped the muzzle of his rifle against the bell. “Dinner bell?”

  “That’s a symbol that represents the fusion of Earth’s five major religions,” said a voice from behind the wooden door. “I would appreciate it if you would not touch it with a weapon of war.”

  “Gunnery Sergeant Madeline Jolly, ma’am. UEF Marines. We’re here to take the alien you’re harboring into custody.”

  A small window i
n the door opened up and a pair of blue eyes peered out. “You mean you’re here to kill him.”

  “We’re carrying out the lawful orders of the UEF, ma’am.” I knew the kind of glacial stare Gunny was laying on the person behind the door, but the blue eyes never flinched. “You’re aware of the Epsilon Directive?”

  “I am,” the voice shot back. “And your directive also forbids you from harming any humans in the execution of your duties. I believe you call it ‘collateral damage.’“

  Gunny cleared her throat. “That’s correct, ma’am.”

  The door opened to reveal a slim woman in her thirties. Her face was deeply tanned and she wore a simple shift of soft gray that highlighted her eyes. She held out her hand to Gunny and smiled. “My name is Avalon. But you can call me ‘collateral damage,’ if you like. As long as you leave your guns outside and promise to enter in peace, you are welcome.”

  The woman’s hand hung there for what seemed like a long time. I felt Hercules’ bulk tense up beside me. Then Gunny stripped off her armored glove and shook Avalon’s hand. “Herc, you stay here with the weapons. Noog, you’re with me.”

  It was cool inside the compound and the sweet air emphasized how awful we smelled after two weeks without a shower. Avalon led us into a courtyard with a bubbling fountain and pointed to a low stone bench where we could sit. I could see Gunny’s eyes sizing the place up and wondered if she planned to take out the alien right now. No, I decided, Gunny had a respect for the regs like no one I’d ever seen. She wouldn’t risk hurting one of the humans. Besides, she’d given her word.