SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

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This anthology includes 120 authors—who contributed 230 works totaling approximately
words of fiction. These pieces all originally appeared in 2014, 2015, or 2016 from writers who are new professionals to the SFF field, and they represent a breathtaking range of work from the next generation of speculative storytelling.
All of these authors are eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2016. We hope you’ll use this anthology as a guide in nominating for that award as well as a way of exploring many vibrant new voices in the genre.

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There was no other way. “All right!” she shouted, tugging herself to the pilot’s seat but keeping her eyes on the captain’s face. After a long few seconds, he looked to his crewman and gave an order; the man released Captain Rodriguez’s throat.

He gave a order to one of his companions and the man wrote a message in Mandarin on his communicator and showed it to her: We need elements from the planet to make— and here there was a new character Soraiya had never seen —for fuel. Is this ship in proper working order? If it has been sabotaged, you will be held responsible. The threat was clear.

She replied via the communicator: The dropship is in perfect working order .

The captain nodded curtly. Two of his crew went to retrieve the equipment they had brought to the hangar.

Soraiya felt her ears burn as she sat, for the first time in her life taking control of the dropship knowing it was not a drill—the first person on Home, ever, to do so—and her heart thumped deep in her chest. She was really doing it. She was going down to the planet. She prayed this was the right thing to do. It was reckless. But they would kill Captain Rodriguez if she didn’t. But she was so, so curious. But they didn’t know enough, yet, about the planet.

She clasped the seat harness with shaking hands. “Secure crew!” she shouted, as per routine, and flicked the dropship’s systems to life.

Normally a Home crew oversaw the opening of the launch blister doors, but that could be done remotely from the dropship under emergency protocols. She knew the contingencies.

She pulled a headset on as the captain and the others strapped themselves in. She delayed opening the exterior doors, her hand hovering above the controls and watching the Earth captain, until he secured Captain Rodriguez as well. Then she engaged, ignoring the amplified chatter in her headset from the Earth woman who had elected to be copilot. The outer doors slid open, as they had with every routine practice. Soraiya felt the same thrill she always did, that there was nothing but the emptiness of space beyond. She shook her head and instead of miming the movements over the controls, she placed her hands on the grips and set the dropship free. Out they tumbled, gently spiralling away from Home, the gravity falling away rom their bodies.

It took her longer than during the drills to snap the manouevring thrusters to life. She doublechecked all the systems. Yes, Past Captain Makwa was right. There had been some changes, even to this ship. She breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps this was the only right thing, or perhaps the best of bad choices she could make.

The Earth copilot had given up asking her questions through the headset. Soraiya saw a message from the woman flash on her screen in Mandarin. Can you land this and get us back to our ship.

Soraiya glanced at the copilot, whose cheeks were flat and glistened with nervous sweat. What was she afraid of? Her captain? Death? Or was it something they’d left behind on Earth? Soraiya replied, The ship is in perfect working order .

The descent was unlike anything she had ever experienced. The copilot was an able assistant, given she was still trying to adapt to the archaic interfaces and controls, but since there was no time to type out their communication with each other she and Soraiya were essentially acting alone. The vibrating roar of atmosphere against the armoured hull felt like an interminable grind of stone on stone, as if They Are To Be Respected meant to crush them for their intrusion. Soraiya whispered a brief prayer. Do what you must. I will protect you.

She could not spare a look away from her console to see whether Captain Rodriguez was all right, but she hoped he was. She hoped the rest of the inhabitants of Home were, as well.

The harder part, of course, was landing.

The purple-pink of the landscape, the white froth of clouds, and deep blue of the oceans rushed up to greet them frighteningly fast, and Soraiya deployed the chutes at the appropriate altitude, noting the prevailing wind at this part of the southern hemisphere matched what their satellites and scanners had indicated. As their speed decreased and the atmosphere pushed them around, she panicked. The air was so thick; it wasn’t like manouevring an exovehicle around Home at all. Keep calm, she told herself even as her knuckles whitened and the sweat on her palms made her grip on the controls slip. Your people did not survive generations in space for you to die like this.

The impossibly high branches of pink and red trees reached up as if to grab them. The copilot yelled something through the headset until Soraiya tore it off. “Let me do this!” she shouted back. The dropship yawed as Soraiya guided what was left in the thrusters toward an opening in the forest, a deep purple swath of grass or moss. She hoped it was soft.

THUNK the craft landed with an impact that threw them against the webbing of their harnesses.

Then it was quiet.

Soraiya blinked and unbuckled herself. The Earth captain was already free of his harness and barred the way out. He barked something at her; the way her ears were ringing from the concussion of their landing, she read his lips instead. Something about suits. Protection. She shook her head. “It’s fine. We already know we can breathe down here.” With difficulty, according to their estimates and rigorous simulations.

He pulled out the circular weapon as his crew unbuckled themselves and stood. Captain Rodriguez remained in his seat but he blinked and raised his head. He grimaced as if suffering a migraine. “What—”

The Earth captain spat out another order, gesturing for Soraiya to open the door and holding his weapon ready. Trembling, she nodded. Part of her—a large part—wished he would kill her with it, so it would not be she who defiled They Are To Be Respected. But that was an evasion. She had brought them down here. She could have deliberately scuttled the dropship by fumbling the atmo entry, burned them all up before getting anywhere near the surface. Part of her hungered to step outside, and see it, breathe it, drink it in. She revelled in the pull of real gravity—they had recalibrated the rotation aboard Home upon arrival, to match what a person would feel on They Are To Be Respected, so that the younger generations would grow up ready when they decided to make planetfall. As it was, Soraiya’s joints gave her some grief. But she would take the first steps on the planet. It was more than she had ever dared dream. It felt wrong. But thrilling.

The Earth captain spoke sharply again, to her and then to his companions. They picked up packs of equipment they had brought with them.

Soraiya stepped into the small airlock and secured it. Then she opened the outer door.

The warm wind sworled in around her, playing with her hair. It was unlike the blasting air currents in the long hallways and curved corridors aboard Home; it was so random and fresh and wild. She hesitated for a moment. I am still aboard the dropship , she thought. That was both an excuse to stay and an impetus to leave. She stepped out and down onto the surface.

The red vegetation was a dizzying variety of tall red and purple stalks, with leaflike petals adoring the tops, the breeze whistling through them at a high enough pitch Soraiya heard it well. What other sounds are there here? she wondered, aching for the first time in thousands of days for her hearing aids.

She began to sneeze at something in the air, even as she marvelled at the touch of sunlight on her face. The Earth captain and his crew marched out of the dropship. Captain Rodriguez stumbled down the ramp after them. They began unpacking equipment and their captain directed them to different points of the clearing. As they took readings and called to each other on what they found, Soraiya helped Captain Rodriguez stay on his feet.

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