Science-fiction short stories, mostly from the less-serious end of the spectrum. You'll find zombie presidents, talking sharks, world-endangering sub-woofers, coffee-toting terrorists, an unhealthy number of 80s references and a whole lot more. Th...
A/N: The prompt for this story was to write about the rescue of a condemned criminal, hundreds of years in the future. 500 words.
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The four vessels streaked across the night sky, a constellation of shooting stars trailing fire as they broached the upper atmosphere at seven kilometers per second.
Zed rolled his eyes. Two escorts, his contact had assured him. While he'd never been all that good at maths, it sure as hell looked like there were three. Making a mental note to punch his contact right in the face the next time he saw him, he gunned his skimmer's turbojets and set off in pursuit.
His vision dimmed momentarily as the mach-counter climbed past three, but his pressure suit adjusted, ensuring his brain had enough blood to keep functioning. He snorted at the thought. A functioning brain would've long since decided this was a bad idea.
The target and its escorts were now fully immersed in the atmosphere and rapidly bleeding speed, allowing him to make up ground. At five thousand meters he activated the stealth-shield. It wouldn't fool them for long, but that was OK. He didn't have long.
Six minutes, actually. Six minutes from when they entered the atmosphere, until they arrived at the execution complex. That was his window. His skimmer wasn't space-worthy and it sure as hell wouldn't make it into the complex. This was his only shot.
His HUD flashed red as the rearmost escort's scanners penetrated the shield, followed moments later by the warning tone of missile lock. He hit the afterburners as his own targeting system acquired the escort on the left, simultaneously launching a missile as he activated the ejection system.
He rocketed out of the cockpit as the skimmer surged away beneath him, moments before the rear escort's shot struck. The little craft was instantly transformed into an incandescent fireball; a fireball with enough forward momentum to engulf the rear escort.
One down.
Zed's boot-thrusters flamed, but even at maximum power he began to rapidly fall behind. Lining up the target, he fired a tiny rocket from an arm-mounted launcher, just as his skimmer's posthumous missile took care of the escort on the left.
Two down.
The rocket trailed a filament of graphene, razor thin but incredibly strong. As it attached itself to the target, the remaining escort craft banked in his direction. Grunting as the line came taut, Zed soared to the right and used the filament to sever the escort in two.
Three down.
He retracted the line, landing on the hull of the target. Time for his final trick. He activated the EMP the moment it hit the hull, frying every system in the vessel. Soaring away, he watched as it crashed to earth.
The dust hadn't yet settled by the time he'd blasted his way into the wreck. The crew were dead, but as expected, the prisoner was alive and well, safely insulated in his plasma-shielded pod. He blinked in disbelief at Zed.
"You!"
Zed smiled. "Surprise."
"I'm sentenced to death! Why the hell would you save me?"
"Simple." Zed drew his gun. "So I could kill you myself."
