Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

“Jeez, Cap’n,” says Brandon, and there is a tinge of contempt in his voice at my obvious emotion. I try to rally myself.

“Sound the retreat,” I say.

Over the intercoms of all our warriors comes a haunting trumpet call that presages the end of everything. After all our sacrifice, and heroism, we have failed utterly. We have rescued no one from the Imperial yoke. Nothing has been achieved. Nothing.

The bugle call echoes.

I swallow some vomit. And I steel myself. I have no choice. Plan B is the only option. My brow furrows…

“Cap’n?”

I feel a chill of fear that almost cripples me, but still I continue.

My brow is furrowed now like a clenched fist. I start to shudder like an epileptic. I can hardly keep my balance.

“Cap’n? What the hell is it?”

I fall to the ground in spasms, my body and mind are in overload. I bite my tongue and blood spurts from my mouth. I crunch my teeth shut and try to keep my focus. Focus. Focus. Focus…

“I’m getting a signal,” says Jamie. He hacks into the Kornbluth Beacon’s communications system.

I clamber to my feet, spitting blood, then look at the vid screen. A frightened-looking Commander is speaking to camera. He tells his masters on Earth: “SOS, SOS! We… have an infection. The ship is infested with…” Fear contorts his face. “… with Bugs. Request immediate… sanitising… measures.”

There’s a devastating silence for two and a half seconds. Then Jamie and Brandon roar with laughter.

“Nice one, Cap’n.”

“Pathetic, but nice.”

“I mean, they may be dumb, but they’ll never fall for the same trick twice,” Brandon adds, tauntingly.

On our vidscreen, we see that the Commander of the Beacon Ship is visibly sweating. He scratches his stomach. He blows out his cheeks, like a trumpeter. His eyes goggle.

Then, as we watch him on the vidscreen, he explodes. A billion black swarming insects come flying out of his eyes and nose and ears and explode also from his belly button, and burst too out of his anus and down his urethra, until eventually Bugs are bursting through individual pores in the Commander’s skin.

There is another stunned silence on our bridge, but this one lasts longer. Jamie flips a switch and we change cameras to see the Beacon from a distance.

“What the hell is happening?” asks Brandon.

“Thissss is very very bad,” Alby says.

“Oh fuck,” says Jamie.

“Wait. Watch,” I tell them. We wait. We watch.

Nothing happens.

Nothing happens, a bit more.

Then suddenly, a shoal of missiles appears on our vidscreen. They head towards the Beacon. The Earth Humans have ordered the destruction of their own Beacon.

The Beacon’s lights go out. Its defence are shut off. The missiles soar in unopposed, and explode in a series of sequential holocausts.

The Beacon is totally destroyed, in a glorious blaze of light. My heart leaps with joy and fear.

“Get me Illyria,” I say.

Jamie hacks into the communication system of the Illyrian Beacon. The Commander is a raven-haired woman staring straight at camera. “Request immediate assistance!” she yells.

And then she opens her mouth and a black swarming tongue emerges.

Alby screams, a long howling sibilant scream. Kalen hisses with horror, and I am close enough to see the skin on the back of her neck standing up.

Brandon sticks his tongue out, and sneaks a look, in case it is infested and black and he is about to die. Lena is looking at me, with a strange look in her eyes.

“The Bugs can travel along the Quantum Beacons,” says Jamie, marvelling.

“It makes sense,” adds Brandon.

“They’re Quantum Bugs!” Jamie says.

“They can go anywhere. Everywhere!”

“Shit.”

“Fuck.”

“Bad news for the bad guys.”

“Bad news for us too. ’Cause we’re, ah,” says Jamie,

“Doomed!” says Brandon.

“Every single one of us. Every human being. All doomed!”

“Doomed!”

“D-”

“Shut up,” hisses Kalen.

“Give me a live map,” I say.

The screen changes to a map of all human-occupied space, with stars represented by brightly shining lights which are exactly calibrated to the magnitude of the star.

The Quantum Beacons are represented by small silver spheres. The Kornbluth Beacon however is a black shell, no longer functional.

And as we watch, the silver sphere representing Illyria suddenly…

… flashes wildly, like a star that has gone supernova. Then fades to black.

“They’ve auto-destructed the Beacon,” says Jamie.

“Can they do that?” asks Brandon.

“Previously, they couldn’t,” says Jamie snidely. “Now, it seems, they can.”

“Quick learners. Oops, there goes another.”

I recognise the coordinates. The backup Beacon at Cambria has just been blown up. Once more, my people are free.

The live map flares and flashes and fizzes. One by one, then in swarms of flashing lights, all the Beacons in occupied space are auto-destroyed. All of them. Five thousand or more. Because the Earth Humans and their computers know that the only way to safeguard Earth is to quarantine it from all possible infection by Bugs travelling along the Quantum pathways. By destroying all the Quantum Beacons, the Earth Humans have made themselves safe – and have isolated themselves from the rest of the Universe.

Another flash. Another Beacon explodes.

Eventually, not a single Beacon light on the map is lit.

“Okay,” says Kalen. “Now what do we do?”

“Nothing,” says Brandon. “Bugs occupy all human space. Game over.”

“I really like Bugs,” says Jamie. “I’d like Bugs to be my friends. Please? Be nice to me, Bugs?”

Harry emits a strange sound, half groan, half whimper. It is the first time he has ever shown fear. Kalen’s downy fur is standing up, her eyes seem to glitter. Brandon slumps down in his chair. Jamie is looking down, unable to meet anyone’s eye. Alby lights the room with a warm flickering glow, a chiaroscuro that matches the mood of sombre dread.

But Lena is looking at me. She knows what has really happened.

“Come with me,” Lena says.

I nod, slowly. I feel a surge of lust, and I know she feels it too.

We leave the bridge, we abandon our ashen-faced friends, who are all convinced they will die in the next few minutes from Bug infestation.

Lena and I enter my cabin and the lights dim and we strip swiftly.

We screw like devils. And as I start to come, my spirits soar. I have done it! I have won!

“Aaah!” says Lena, and explodes beneath me.

Flanagan

“Now explain,” Lena says, after our passionate burst of sexual energy that has left me shuddering and glowing in equal measure.

So I do.

It began with a game of chess. I met a Grand Master in a bar on the planet Slayer in the binary star system called Hell Dimension. He taught me how to play the game, how to hold interlocking strategies in my head. And how to sacrifice pawns, in order to check the king.

Then I studied military philosophy and absorbed one key principle: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

And then…

His name was Martin. He was a collector of antique toys. He carried in his luggage a virtual model of the solar system complete with orbiting spaceships, which he used to show to anyone who would stay to watch. He was also a world authority on words beginning with “w”, a unique speciality. He loved prime numbers, and could count in them up to well beyond the million mark. He was a sad, lonely, emotionally dysfunctional man.

And he was also a nano-scientist. One of the greatest and most gifted men in his field. Though he was, tragically, unemployable, because people found him so damned annoying.