skonen_blades

April 30/30

28/30

Ringmining attracted a certain kind of personality. Not hermits, per se, but beings okay with long terms of isolation. Rarely, pairs or groups of people worked the rings.

The rings themselves played hell with transmissions when a ship was in them so when a ringminer was gathering, they were on their own.

The particles bounced transmissions around, sometimes for years. It wasn’t uncommon to hear garbled SOS beacons from a decade ago. The rings were creepy. It was best to keep the coms off entirely.

Each ringminer scoopship was a variation on a theme. Not unlike a baleen whale, these ships had wide mouths to collect all the crystals and sift through them for valuable minerals. It was tedious work but the rewards were there. It tended to turn the rings grey after a century of mining but didn’t damage them other than that. The ecolegal fights had been fought and ringminers were a profession for now.

Jordy and Lena were partners on Harling’s Spur, named for Lena’s grandfather. Indeed it had been her grandfather’s ship and was her inheritance when her own father passed. So many parts had been replaced on it that she doubted it could even be called the same ship. She was a second-generation ringminer.

Jordy was new to the business and Lena was starting to think he wasn’t cut out for it.

She’d met Jordy on a supply run to K-78, the largest general store asteroid near these parts. It had been a one stop shop to both bury her father and get a new partner. She’d been blinded by grief, perhaps. Jordy was handsome, long-haired and strong jawed, but she’d forgotten that appearances can be deceiving. After three nights of passion, she’d signed him on with visions of bouts of lovemaking in between bouts of mining.

The dreams of a teenager.

Jordy started complaining about boredom almost as soon as they hit the rings. “Nothing to do, nothing to do, nothing to do” had become his mantra. His constant sighs and huffs were contributing to the rising tension. Lena had tried to teach meditation, exposed him to the ship’s library and games system, even tried to teach him tantra but it didn’t work.

He was a social animal. Perhaps he’d been blinded by lust as well.

Either way, this wasn’t going to work out and the hold wasn’t nearly full enough to justify a return trip. Lena knew that Jordy, soon enough, would demand to be returned home no matter what the expense. He wouldn’t wait six months and he was stronger than her. Things would get ugly.

She decided to nip it in the bud.

Another reason she’d picked Jordy was that he was a drifter of no importance. He didn’t have rich parents or a large family that would miss him. She thought that marked him out as the right kind of loner for the job. She was wrong about that but the upside was that making the problem go away wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows.

While he was sleeping, Lena brought the largest gravwrench they had in the toolbox down on Jordy’s head enough times to make sure he’d never wake up.

She jettisoned his body and the wrench into the dust of the rings. The surplus of supplies with his absence meant that she’d be able to stay here for a year. It would be difficult to operate the ship by herself but she could do it.

Maybe on the next trip back to civilization, a more proper partner could be found.

Ringmining attracted a certain kind of personality.




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We had always been looking for a way to legitimately kill the stupid. But where did one draw the line? An outside force, something inhuman, had to make the choice. We couldn’t make that kind of decision.

We found a way.

The aliens left behind a device. We don’t understand how it worked but the components were simple and easy to recreate.

After first contact, Earth was catalogued, included in their star maps as possessing both intelligent and non-intelligent life, and then left alone. It was quite anticlimactic. Almost business-like. The aliens themselves had translator machines that picked up our language nuances wonderfully. They went to great lengths to appear like us. Aside from the blue skin and golden eyes, they succeeded. Their spokespeople appeared on all of our talk shows and deftly handled all of our xenophobic questions. They mollified us, measured us, and left.

The silence in their wake was depressing. Those that had been waiting to become part of the galactic family all of their lives felt like they’d been given nothing more than a high-five.

Then we found the device. It was the small machine they used to detect intelligent life. It flashed red on animals, meaning non-intelligent life, but green on most humans.

Most humans.

Some humans were classified as red. The mentally challenged, those with brain damage, and most children under the age of three, for instance. But around fifteen percent of adults tested also fell into the red category. In most cases, it wasn’t a shock. Racists, incompetents, overly aggressive men, willfully ignorant people, non-readers, dubious politicians, and religious zealots for instance. There were exceptions to all of these categories but the ones that showed up red were rarely surprising.

Many genetic theories were thrown into the pot. Perhaps these people, mostly from the same families, were closer in lineage to our ancestors and had not been given sufficient spurring to evolve. Perhaps they were from a strain of the human race with defects. Perhaps inbreeding millennia ago had produced these throwbacks.

That’s when the theory started that maybe the human race needed to be pure for the aliens to return, that maybe we were being watched and tested.

The first few ‘red murders’ were put down to extremists but as Green Wave Party started climbing in numbers, death tolls rose.

At first, all of the red-positive folks were rounded up for their own protection. Those temporary lodgings turned into refugee camps as the months and years went by. They were a drain on resources. Several leaders in the scientific community calmly suggested euthanizing the lot of them. After all, according to the alien’s machine, they were no smarter than stray dogs.

Most of the cities concurred.

Calmly, deliberately, and with a cold, orderly precision that would have made Hitler jealous, the lives in the camps were extinguished.

A few rebelled and successfully broke free only to become the hunted. A few escaped because of sentimental attachments that Green Wave Party members had. Wives or stepsons, that sort of thing. They were neutered and let out into GWP custody with no more rights than pets.

After the purge, the human race has become smug, docile, and guilty. Everyone is routinely tested. Everyone is green. We are smart and happy.

And it was all thanks to the aliens. We can’t wait to show them what we’ve accomplished.

We’re still waiting for their return.




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Hit men are not naturally gregarious people.

The keep to themselves.

That’s why the three of them were so uncomfortable. Reliable professionals, all of them, who had graduated to the level of assassin. None of these three would walk into a crowded deli and open fire on a target. They weren’t that kind of lion.

These killers were subtle. These were the kind of killers that scaled walls and dropped poison into bedside cups that made the coroners think that their victims had died of heart attacks or strokes.

Invisible shadows hiding in plain sight.

Your average button man for the mob was a loser. A tool about as replaceable to the organization as the gun he used in his work. He was kept around like a dog.

These guys, though, they operated through blinds and doubles. No one knew their true faces. They all had aliases, many passports in different names, scrambled far-off bank accounts, and smiles that didn’t quite reach their eyes.

Until now, each and every one of them had worked alone. This present job that had them sitting in the same pub was unorthodox but the money that was on offer was enough to let them retire if they pulled it off.

The target was very difficult but doable. The plan was sound. They were just waiting for the go-ahead now.

The tall one at the table took a sip of his beer and sized the other two up.

The one to his left had mousy red hair and a flat nose. He had the face of a dock worker, invisible to most people.

The other one was refined without being flashy. Obviously in shape and wearing a cheap grey suit. Also invisible in most parts of town. People saw the suit, not his face.

The tall one doing the staring had small eyes and short hair. He was thin and there was something about him that made witnesses not too sure that he was the man they had saw running from the scene. It’s like his aura was greased. People’s perceptions just slid off of him.

The three of them depended on being hard to notice. It had worked so far. Even the waitress in this place had forgotten to ask them if they wanted another drink. They were good at being background.

They had their phones in the middle of the table. They were waiting for The Call.

They didn’t talk to each other. Red hair stared at the last sip of his beer, Suit gazed up at the ceiling in idle thought, and Tall One kept appraising Red Hair and Suit.

It was a long afternoon.



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The thing about top level athletes is that their sport equipment becomes an extension of them. Tennis racquets become, in the mind of the player, a 'furthering' of their own arms. Their hands become giant paddles with which to hit the ball. Golfers at the top of their game couldn't tell you where their arms end and the clubs begin. Polo mallets as well. Basketballs. Even race cars. They get absorbed into a athlete's personal energy field and mindset to the point where the equipment becomes part of the human body.

The thing about top level musicians is that their instruments join with them in a hybrid form that equals more than the sum of its parts. It's a true mixing of artistry, equipment, craftsmanship, and talent. A separation between the person and the musical generator becomes impossible. It's obvious to viewers. Musicians themselves will talk of a trance. A sort of disappearance takes place when the music is played flawlessly and with passion. The person combined with the piano or the guitar or what have you become a synergistic union that is both here and not here.

The thing about top level assasins is that they become extensions of the tools of thier trade. Their relationship with the tools is the opposite of the relationship that athletes have with their tools. The assassin's art is unlike the art of music. The killing weapon, be it a knife or a rifle, bleeds its stillness and coldness into the user if he or she is proficient. A sniper knows that when he shoots, he cannot breathe. In effect, he must mimic death in order to provide the stillness that will make him capable of making a gift of death to his target. An assassin frequently has to wait for hours or days before his quarry affords him a moment of opportunity. A passionate kill usually causes mistakes and evidence. A good assassin must be cold, methodical, ruthless and above all, patient. The plan, the tool, and the execution use the talented assassin as an extension of themselves.



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And we’ll see how that works out.
I said. To myself.
Looking at the body and answering my friend’s question.
I hope I live longer than he did. It’s there. The hope. The primal glee that it’s not me.
Making me ashamed and furtive like I did the killing.
Which is alarming to me because I did do the killing.
But I don’t want to appear furtive and ashamed. The police have to believe my story.
They’ll come in with helmets.
Not wearing them but holding them in their hands, ready to place on my head.
Retainments.
I won’t go back. They need to believe what the helmet tells them.
I’ve practiced the story so many times that I think I can fool the helmet.

My friend’s body lies on a broken mirror.
I can see myself reflected in little shards around him like a constellation of guilt.
I am wide-eyed.
Who was I fooling?
I couldn’t fool a cat.
They won’t even need the helmet.

I can wipe the prints off the knife, blame it on a burglar, doctor the logs but I’ll never be able to feign surprise or stay calm. All they’ll have to do is look in my eyes.

I’ve been stupid.
Already I miss my friend.
Already my reasons for killing him seem trivial.

My motive is obvious and my alibi is weak.

I screwed up.

I wish the knife I killed the human with could pierce my metal skin.


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Chainsaws. Motor-sickles. We brought in fifteen metallions in case there was trouble.

Warriors nuns staked out the perimeter. My hand-held repeater was at the ready.

We'd tracked the quarry to the Dark Burrough Border underneath the bridge.

The was Bridesville. It was 1976.

This was where the brides were held until Their Day. Some sold, most in love or arranged.

I remembered the last victim. Young. Wide generous mouth. Hair you could knit a quilt with. A tiny gold star set in every tooth. She was staring up at the ceiling with the half-smile she must have been wearing when she finally bled out and drifted Away.

I held the Bridal Pass up to identify the body, amazed at the difference between a graduation picture and a crime scene photograph. A posed, unnatural smile in my hand versus seventeen entry wounds in a black and white flashlit parking lot.

She was wearing a dirty yellow plastic banana clip from the Real World in her hair. Most likely her most valuable posession. It would have been the best wedding that month.

Her glasses still dangled off of her sticky outstretched hand. The blood was stark against her dress.

It was stark gainst all of bride's dresses of the victims so far.

We suspected an Errant Husband or a Shoveljaw judging by some of the wounds. Shoveljaws aren't smart enough to get away with twenty-seven murders, though, and they rarely go rogue.

I prayed we weren't looking at another Remeleon or Kah-Pirate.

My bones were tired. I took the cigarette out of the hole in my neck to suck in whistling fresh air that made me cough.

It was a dark night.

Never wear black to a crime scene. It makes it feel too much like a funeral. I sensed another week of red-eyed mornings until I was finally taken off of this case.

I needed a drink.



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There’s a moment in everyone’s life when the subject of death becomes a certainty and ceases to be abstract. It’s a final shift of perception that kicks the mind into a different level.

It usually lasts a few seconds. Sometimes minutes. For the really unlucky, it can last weeks.

Spelunkers feel it when they start to get drowsy and know that help is not on the way. Pilots feel it when they can see the leaves on the trees just meters away from the windshield. Jumpers feel it just after their feet leave the sill.

The strong hands wrapped around Martin’s throat were having that effect.

Moments earlier, the fight had taken a turn for the worse when epithets were thrown concerning the assailant’s girlfriend. These comments had whisked the fight from street brawl to primitive battle. It had switched from assault to probable homicide in a few syllables.

Martin’s vision was starting to gray out and with a shock, he realized that he was actually dying. There would be no act three. He wouldn’t wake up in a hospital bed. The other guy’s rational mind had completely checked out.

The inarticulate red face pressed close to his was fixed in a spasming mask of rage. The owner of that face would keep squeezing until bones broke.

It was a horrible thought. This man was going to take Martin’s life with his bare hands.

It was that thought that made Martin’s body spasm and buck like a fish. He thrashed.

The hot fingers around his neck adjusted their grip.

Martin’s leg connected with his assailant’s testicles and suddenly, a world of painful air whistled through his constricted throat. The other guy had let go.

Martin ran, sucking as much air as he could into his lungs with every hobbling step.

He never wanted to come that close to death again.

Martin was a different person after that.


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What a cliché. There I was, handcuffed to a chair and telling them that I knew my rights. Yelling at them about what an outrage this was. Straight out of a movie. I couldn’t help it. I thought I was above the law at this stage, you have to remember. A member of the political cabinet currently in power. What a naïve little twit. This was their lucky day.

She walked in quickly and slapped her briefcase down across the table from where I was sitting. Quickly and without ceremony, she started shuffling through the papers she had brought.

When she had them into three neat piles, she finally looked straight at me. Well, ‘looked’ isn’t the right word. It was more of a stare. She still hadn’t sat down.

I could hear the hums and pops of her internal headphones and I could see the reverse image of the data spooling down her glasses. My life was flashing in front of her eyes.

It was an uncomfortable thirty seconds later before my court appointed lawyer sat down across from me and steepled her fingers with a deep breath before picking the best way to proceed with my case.

“Senator Peterson” she began, “You have been illegally copying yourself in no less that three separate incidents. We have begun digging on your property and have found six bodies. It will take time to go through them but I have no doubt that the DNA will show that they are also you.”

She took off her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose with her eyes squinted shut. She put them back on again and resumed.

“You are guilty of not only copying yourself but also of clone-slaughter. Your career in politics is over. I will try to keep you out of jail. Your regular lawyer will not take this case. No lawyer will. To be associated with you at this point would be career suicide.”

And there it was. It hit me hard. She spoke with such nonchalant authority. I knew this wasn’t a scare tactic. It hadn’t even occurred to me that my career could be in jeopardy, let alone over.

I’d need to buy time for Peterson-1 to get to a safe place.


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It fell to me as the new guy to turn out the lights. Whenever an experiment was terminated or needed to be shut down and relocated, it was the latest acquisition’s responsibility to stalk the halls. We were working on super soldiers. Completed successful projects were hired to police the perimeter and man the switches.

I was the latest completed successful project. I was the new guy.

‘Turning out the lights’ was a euphemism for executing the mid-state or failed projects that hadn’t yet matured. Killing my brothers. Downsizing them to the afterlife. Outsourcing them to the infinite.

This station wasn’t big. Eight trailers buried in the Arizona desert linked by air conditioned suitlocks. It had as much comfort as complete secrecy would allow. We were effectively a microcosm. A child had ridden his bike over one of our near surface power cables three hours ago. It had been exposed by a dust storm. After a brief inspection, he cycled off.

We needed to relocate in case he brought back a parent to take a closer look at it. Curiousity killed the cat but we needed to be invisible. We could kill no cats.

There were seven experiments in this facility. Two of us had ‘graduated’ to being in uniform and given a name. The other five were in their rooms hooked up to tubes and maturing. This would be their last moments. My hands were lethal weapons. The other graduated experiment who came before me patted me on the back and left through the ladder up to the dropship to join the scientists. I was left alone with my duty.

I set my jaw and walked forward. I kicked down the doors of their quarters and flooded their rooms with energy from my fingertips.

The first two were practically fetuses and died boiling in their tubes, scrabbling at the glass, mewling at me in confusion before going limp and silent.

The third was a child who I interrupted while he was doing a military reflex puzzle on a fold out card table. He jumped when I kicked the door in but smiled when he saw me. He drew breath to speak. I flexed and he cooked with that smile blackening and peeling back from his white teeth.

Number four was a Failure. He looked up at me through giant watery eyes. His bulk filled the back third of the room. He gave me a nod and closed his eyes. Not as dumb as the scientists had thought, then. His massive body popped and sizzled like a roaring winter’s spitroast. His last breath sounded like a sigh of relief.

Number five was scheduled to be named Jenny when she graduated in three weeks. So close. She almost talked me out of it. It took five minutes. In the end I took her life without using my powers. It’s what she wished after she saw that I would not be dissuaded. Her glassy eyes were still staring up at the ceiling when I left her on the floor.

I climbed the ladder crying but my tears dried in the desert sun when I got to the surface.

My initiation was completed. I got into the dropship with the rest of the ops crew. We blasted the sand and erased our presence. We vectored north to find another site.



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