The muffled thump of metal on metal. Again. A third time and the door buckles, a piece of the lock flying off and hitting an overturned chair. A final blow and the thick metal door breaks from its hinges, falling into the room with a crash. Hard white light streams in through the doorway, silhouetting an enormous figure in a radiation suit carrying a heavy steel battering ram. The figure steps back, disappearing into the glare of the spotlights. A second figure, also wearing one of the bulky ...

He climbs, struggling not to lose his footing. The man stretches out a gloved hand and grabs a steel reinforcement-bar. It is one of many. They used to be buried deep inside concrete walls, now they are just another part of the devastation--convenient handholds in his search. The man hauls himself up onto the mountain of concrete. "Are you okay, Professor Steadman?" a voice crackles over the intercom. Professor Steadman stands and looks out across the ruined USAF base. He is breathing heavily...

He struggles not to lose his footing. The man stretches out a hand, grabs hold of a long steel bar sticking out of the wreckage and hauls himself up onto steadier ground. The bar was once buried deep within thick concrete walls, reinforcing them, holding them up. Now it is just a convenient handhold for a stubborn old man. He should have let someone else do this. Someone younger. Someone fitter. He should be sat in the back of one of their air-conditioned trailers, watching via the suit's hea...

A figure mounts the wreckage. He struggles not to loose his footing. It is not easy--the heavy suit he wears makes movement difficult, but without it he would be dead in minutes. The air is choked with radioactive dust, blown by the desert winds from the hole in the earth that was once a power station. The man stops and looks around, having to turn his entire upper body to see clearly through the small glass faceplate. He reaches down to his side, grabs a small terminal clipped to his huge be...

Chapter 1. The star-craft thundered through the portal, exhaust gases from its vast engines buffeting the thin atmosphere of the toroidal habitat ring like a hurricane; ionised particles creating storms or aurora borealis in the magnetic shielding. If there had been anyone left alive on the ring looking up through that atmosphere, it would have been a spectacular site. But there was no one left here to appreciate it. There had been no one here for more than one hundred and thirty years. No on...

The fat man laughed. “I bet that makes it worthwhile, eh?” He said. How had everything gotten so far? Surely this wasn’t it? This is what it was all worth? Something wasn’t right. I closed the case and looked up at him. “It’s not enough,” I said “I want more.” He looked at me. He didn’t seem surprised. “Well now, I thought you’d say that. So what if I was to tell you that the police are on their way here? That somebody has tipped them off that Jake Friar has been spotted in the area. You know...

Commander Vog placed his spectacles on the desk, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s what?” He asked the underling. The underling gulped nervously. “Er, it’s not ... not worked, sir.” He stammered. Vog replaced his glasses and took a deep breath. “How do you mean?” “Well, something a bit odd’s happened, sir.” Vog glared at the underling. He knew it wasn’t his fault, but he needed to glare at somebody, and this guy just happened to be there. The underling backed slowly ou...

“Who are you? What do you want?” the man screamed in my face. Simple questions, but ones that are not so easy to answer. As is the custom with such things, I guess I should start at the beginning. And the beginning of this tale starts with extraordinary violence. I hadn’t ever wanted for much. Just a nice job, working to help people, a nice house in the country, filled with the sounds of happy children and lastly a wife to love with all my heart. And I guess two out of three isn’t bad without...

Hale slid the blade between the man's ribs, feeling the soft tension of his lungs as they first resisted, and then, with a sickening squelch, burst open. Air escaped, blowing bubbles into the blood that ran down the blade and onto her hand. The man struggled, and she instinctively applied more force to the hand that covered his mouth, pulling his head back towards hers, bringing his ear level with her mouth. He tried to scream, but it was a futile effort, what little air was left in his lungs...

Cadarence slipped the controls into manual and plunged the craft towards the boiling mass below. The great red, orange and yellow bands grew larger, closer, and as they did, they lost their forms. Colours became inter-mingled, overlapping, merging; new patterns were evident and then, in a fleeting instant gone, moving on, as both his sense of scale changed, and the great forces that dominated them pulled them into new contortions. Vast winds shaped this planet, the currents of which where the...