Tomorrow in All the Worlds

Tomorrow in All the Worlds

Stories from the Boundary

By Ron Collins

Other Work by Ron Collins

Stealing the Sun (6 Books)

Saga of the God-Touched Mage (8 Books)

Wakers

The Knight Deception

The PEBA Diaries (2 books)

Picasso’s Cat & Other Stories

Five Magics

Follow Ron at:

http://www.typosphere.com

Twitter: @roncollins13

Newsletter: http://typosphere.com/newsletter

Copyright

Tomorrow in All the Worlds

© 2020 Ron Collins

All rights reserved

Unless otherwise noted, all appeared originally in Boundary Shock Quarterly.

The Ambassador Objective © 2018

Drinks on a Beach © 2018

Tomorrow in All the Worlds © 2018

Fighting the Realm © 2019

Space Tyrants from the Void © 2019

Eyes Flashing Blue and Brown and Green © 2019

Goliath’s Sling © 2019

Bugs originally appeared in Analog © 2013

Cover Design by Ron Collins

© 2020 Ron Collins

All rights reserved

Cover Images: © Frenta | Dreamstime.com | Sunset in alien planet

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All incidents, dialog, and characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Skyfox Publishing

ISBN-10: 1-946176-20-6

ISBN-13: 978-1-946176-20-2

for Lisa

Introduction

By Blaze Ward

When I set out to create Boundary Shock Quarterly (my own science fiction magazine), I wanted to do something new and kinda weird, so instead of just having an open call constantly, I went looking for a set of professionals that I could recruit. I have been blessed to be associated with the Oregon Writers Network, folks who can turn around a story in a day if they had to. On theme. On spec. To length. Oh, and frequently award-winning quality.

Ron was one of the first people I approached. He writes amazing stuff, as you’ll see here. But more than that, he’s a pro who is willing to meander off into the weeds with me when I come up with a really strange theme. (And we’ve done some really strange things over the last couple of years, as you will see from this collection in your hands.)

Boundary Shock Quarterly is an experiment in a new way of publishing. There are fifteen of us in a closed Syndicate. The agreement everyone made with me at the beginning was that they would put two stories in each year (out of four), so that I would generally end up with 60,000-80,000 words.

The themes are all science fiction, but that is such a wide field that nobody is going to get bored writing the same story over and over. Instead, they’ve had the opportunity to stretch themselves, wandering into the sorts of dark alleys of subgenre that they might not have ever chosen to pursue on their own.

As I write these words, Issue 009 is out. Alien Dreams, where no humans are allowed to be present as heroes. They can be villains or bystanders, but that’s it. Coming up next is Homo Futuris, the genetic engineering issue. Previous issues have included: Asteroid Miners and Comet Wildcatters, Apocalypse Descending, Grand Theft Starship. Etc.

However, I want to call your attention to Ron’s story that he put into Issue 006: Ray Guns and Space Babes. I will let the title of the story speak for itself.

Space Tyrants from the Void

Chapter 4: Cell Block Nebula, and The Fighting Tiger of Lakoo

Yes, you read that right. He started the story in chapter four and cliff-hangered the end of it, as though this was a Saturday morning serial in the old days. At the time I published the story originally, I included a note to readers to forward all death threats and ninjas directly to him, as I was just the messenger here and didn’t deserve any abuse.

That still stands.

However, if you wanted to send him email to write the rest of that novel, I would not be opposed. Heh.

So you are holding the collection of the weird, fun, and adventurous stuff Ron gave me over the first two and a half years of Boundary Shock Quarterly. All damned good stories and I look forward to hearing from you after you get done. But do me one favor? Once you see how amazing this project can be, go back and pick up the whole Boundary Shock Quarterly series so you can get introduced to a dozen other lunatics and their adventures.

I promise you will not be bored.

shade and sweet water

Blaze Ward

West of the Mountains, WA

20200201

The Ambassador Objective

appeared in Boundary Shock Quarterly

Captain’s Log (Winter 2018) – #1

The aliens are already among us, right? That’s one of the responses to Fermi’s paradox, wherein he asks where are they when contemplating the existence of extraterrestrial life. When Blaze asked for something weird or on-edge I chose something closer to the edge than the weird—though I suppose if you were on the other side of this mission, you might argue the opposite. Regardless, I was trying to look at our world from outside eyes here and at the same time be true to the harsh realities of operations on foreign soil and the cold reality of what it means to be a foot soldier on the grounds of what is, essentially, the greatest culture war of all.

Things went wrong from the beginning.

Of course they did.

Within moments of planetfall on Sol-3, Ensign Tabbal-rok slipped in the darkness and tumbled down a ravine lined with sharp rocks and dry leaves, eventually wedging herself into a muddy clump of brush. Gravity here was nearly twice that of Adibus, and Tabbal-rok’s physique was ill-prepared for the fall. The brittle crunch of her femur made Rebar’s stomachs turn. The fact that he knew he was going to remember that sound for a long time was just another reason to hate this planet.

Her extraction was complicated by thick woods and grounds that were slippery with a combination of dead leaves and fresh dew, a pairing that made rocks and bark feel even sharper than usual. As operations leader, Rebar drew the unhappy task of descending. The third in their excursion, Chief Inspector Garant, braced his three-hands against stones and trees at the top of the ridge while managing the rescue line and grunting sounds of worry as Rebar roped his way into the dark crevasse and worked on the wounded ensign.

Holding, Garant said as he wrapped cord behind his back in the very way they practiced in the drills.

The line remained taut.

Rebar grimaced at the chief inspector’s tone, which was low and earnest. The fact that the chief inspector was professional about it shouldn’t have irked anyone, but Rebar had to grit his mandibles to refrain from snapping as he moved his one-hand and two-hand one over the other to descend. Despite being a veteran, Garant hadn’t lost the essence of precision that came as if coated over an initiate straight from the classroom. The overt seriousness of his approach was annoying—especially from a veteran.

The act of getting Tabbal-rok back to her homing pod put them two twentieth-rotations behind schedule—time they couldn’t spare. But the work was accomplished and the pod was sent back toward Command just prior to star rise.

Rebar's superstitious nature said this start was an omen.

His experience said it was just another of a hundred things to worry about.

This operation was a bad call from the beginning. He had argued the point with Supreme Leader Bentin-nok for too long, but lost out in the end.

You understood our mission when you took the post, Bentin-nok had said.

Yes, Rebar answered despite that the leader’s statement was not a question.

The Ambassador Objective was the highest calling of any in Calar culture: To serve at the forward edge of interstellar travel, to be a conduit by which new species were brought into the Galactic Collective, was the highest of all honors—MCMD: Mutual support, Collective benefit, Multiple talents, and Difference in opinions that would serve to strengthen the whole. When he was younger he accepted it all. More than accepted it. When he was younger he believed in that mission fully and wholly. Followed it with all his heart. It was what he knew. What he breathed. What he bathed in. What he lived for.

That was before, though.

I still understand the mission, he continued. But you are understating the risks. I’ve been on the planet before. I’ve seen what these creatures are capable of.

Only some of them.

Enough of them.

They are in transition, Operations Leader. Bentin-nok’s inflection accentuated the differences in their positions and carried a warning that could not be ignored. They are working to prepare themselves. There are already many in their ranks who see themselves as members of a greater whole. They have many cycles of work before their technology allows them full access to inclusion. There is time for the rest to grow.

That was the thing about Strategists and other proponents of Advancements, of which Supreme Leader Bentin-nok most certainly was. They saw only opportunity. To them, planets like Sol-3 were pieces on the board, collective cultures to prod and study, species to assess with processes and rule-sticks that mostly served to boost their own sense of self-worth even if it cost good Calar their lives. As Rebar thought through this, the Supreme Leader’s eyes focused with a level of intensity that said further discussion would be taken as a personal attack.

You are probably right, Rebar had replied after choking back several other retorts he would have much preferred to give.

As a result, he was in charge of the landing mission, responsible for himself and two other lives on an excursion that would span into daylight hours, and responsible for gathering data and DNA samples of various life-forms that the examiners had listed as imperative.

Being on planet in daylight hours was bad.

The creatures worked better then. Their eyesight had evolved over time to survive in it. But the examiners said the early hours of star rise were the best harvesting time for these specimens, and the landing site was remote. Even Rebar understood that the integrity of the mission would outweigh other parameters in this case.

Regardless, the plan had been for them to be off planet an hour after star rise, but that wasn’t going to happen now.

It worried him more than he thought was healthy to admit.

Standing at the landing zone and watching Tabbal-rok’s homing pod rise up into the lightening sky, Rebar’s chest froze with an angry sense of dread.

Starshock, he thought. The debilitating sensation that other vets had gotten when they played the string out too far. You feel locked down, a decorated Calar had explained in a training lecture he had lined into on the trip here. Time freezes and you just feel lost.

For the first time, he wondered if maybe he was done.

Could he be coming down with it? Should he be here now? Was his fear a sign that he could no longer be trusted as a teammate?

Rebar flashed on the worst of his missions to this planet.

The team had been away for three days, hiding in brush during daylight arcs and working under cover of the evenings. The assignment had been