Forever Magazine Issue 100 by Ken Liu & Susan Palwick & Peter Watts

Author:Ken Liu & Susan Palwick & Peter Watts [Liu, Ken & Palwick, Susan & Watts, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: magazine, science fiction, Science Fiction - Short Stories, science fiction magazine, short fiction, short stories
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2023-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, May 2000.

ZeroS

Peter Watts

Asante goes out screaming. Hell is an echo chamber, full of shouts and seawater and clanking metal. Monstrous shadows move along the bulkheads; meshes of green light writhe on every surface. The Sāḥilites rise from the moon pool like creatures from some bright lagoon, firing as they emerge; Rashida’s middle explodes in dark mist and her top half topples onto the deck. Kito’s still dragging himself toward the speargun on the drying rack—as though some antique fish-sticker could ever fend off these monsters with their guns and their pneumatics and their little cartridges that bury themselves deep in your flesh before showing you what five hundred unleashed atmospheres do to your insides.

It’s more than Asante’s got. All he’s got is his fists.

He uses them. Launches himself at the nearest Sāḥilite as she lines up Kito in her sights, swings wildly as the deck groans and drops and cants sideways. Seawater breaches the lip of the moon pool, cascades across the plating. Asante flails at the intruder on his way down. Her shot goes wide. A spiderweb blooms across the viewport; a thin gout of water erupts from its center even as the glass tries to heal itself from the edges in.

The last thing Asante sees is the desert hammer icon on the Sāḥilite’s diveskin before she blows him away.

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