by Michael Kingswood Autonomous Drilling Unit Seven detected an overspeed condition on one of its drill motor drivetrains. Motor number six was approaching the upper limit of its allowed operational speed band, and the monitoring speed sensor flashed an alert. This prompted a series of diagnostic algorithms, which ADU-7 performed in the background while it…
Tag: Short Story
Suspended Sentence – Part 3
by Silent Draco Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 2050, 20 Jun 45, Base Gold Four, American Zone of Occupation “Colonel Sellers, pleasure to see you and colleague again!” boomed Colonel Novoshenko. His face grew long as he added, “But news with ill wind have you? Comrade Lieutenant Simirov, your radio said,…
Heaven’s Gate
by Michael Kingswood The central marketplace in Theomor, the capital city of Heaven’s Gate, extended for a kilometer in every direction, and housed merchants of all kinds, and without much in the way of rhyme or reason that Manolo could figure out. A sparkling clean, brightly lit, three-story store decorated in the latest modern flash…
Suspended Sentence – Part 1
by Silent Draco Part 1 1850, 20 Jun 45, near Eisenach [Soviet Zone of Occupation] “Well. This is rather a dog’s breakfast, eh what?” came dryly in the evening air. “Major Griffin, if you please, not now!” growled the American. “Why, Colonel Sellers, after your time with … staff agencies, you should have some sense…
Revelator
by Michael Kingswood Barnam licked his lips and bent forward. Squinting in the darkness, he could just make out the lock at the bottom of the window in front of him. It looked simple; an easy pick that should just take a minute or two. Too simple. He turned his head to the right where…
A Cabin In The Woods
by Michael Kingswood The wind rushed past, making the thin wooden sides of the tiny cabin Nancy huddled in shudder. A high-pitched whistling advertised its penetration through the cracks around the cabin’s latched door, and she shivered as what warmth there was fled before its incursion. She wrapped the threadbare wool blanket that she had…
The Greenhorn Tree
by Michael Kingswood Once upon a time, far away in the land of Quenith, lived a young man and his brother. Their names were Gideon and Marnik. They lived with their father, Gregor, halfway up the foothills of the mountains on the west side of the kingdom, where they helped their father fell trees and…
Shell Shock
by Michael Kingswood The shell landed three feet away from me. I was crouched—really pressed prone into the dirt with my hands thrown over my head—in my pitiful attempt at a foxhole, but we’d had so little time to get on station and then prepare to repel the oncoming attack that I’d only been able…
Sacred Vows
by Michael Kingswood The fabric of his cassock was heavy brown wool, and even through the Underarmor long-sleeved t-shirt he wore beneath it, Gregory could still feel the itching want to break out all over his torso. Every timed he donned it, he wondered at the endurance of his brothers back in medieval times, wearing…
Liquor Coolers
by Michael Kingswood It was a Thursday night, and the crowd in The Golden Harp was almost non-existent. Just Tim down at the corner of the bar farthest from the door, dressed as usual in plaid flannel and jeans and leaning over his half-full mug of beer like it held some deep dark secret, and…